The Global PC Market Declined By 4.9% Versus Last Year As Memory Shortages Intensify, But MacBook Neo’s Success Shows That x86 Rivals Need To Do More

The worldwide PC market declined by 4.9% in Q2 2026, showing how memory shortages have disrupted the segment.

Apple Defies A Brutal PC Slump, Growing Shipments 10.1% While Every x86 Rival Bleeds Under The Memory Shortage

Memory shortages and continued price hikes grip the PC segments, leading to a severe decline in consumer interest and a fall in overall shipments. As per IDC's latest stats, the PC market saw a decline of 4.9% in Q2 2026 versus the prior year. The overall shipments only reached 68.2 million units, the first decline after a nine-quarter growth.

While memory shortages were the biggest reason for this downward trend, other factors such as geopolitical issues and rising component prices also affected the segment. Despite the shipment fall, PC vendors still managed to boost their revenues by pushing price increases despite the drop in demand.

“The real story here is the disconnect between units and dollars: shipments are falling, but revenue is climbing because vendors are pushing through price increases faster than demand is dropping,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC. “Given worsening macro conditions and a memory shortage that isn’t expected to ease until early 2028, we don’t expect another round of inventory pull-forward, which points to a sharp slowdown in growth rates in the second half of 2026. Vendors are bracing for further price hikes into 2027, and channels are already flagging concern about elevated inventory at these higher price points.”

via IDC

Talking about the top 5 brands, Lenovo held the biggest shipment share with 16.6 million PC units shipped in Q2 2026, a decline of 2.1% versus 17 million units in Q2 2025, HP shipped 13.0 million units versus 14.3 million units in Q2 2025 (9% decline), Dell shipped 9.3 million units versus 9.8m (5% decline), and ASUS shipped 5m units, the same as the year prior. Other PC vendors shipped a cumulative 17.5 million units, down from 19.6 million units (10.5% decline).

Apple was the only PC vendor that managed to post a 10.1% surge in shipments. The company shipped 6.7 million units, which shows great interest in its latest Mac products, such as MacBook Neo.

Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Traditional PC Shipments, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q2 2026 (Preliminary results, shipments are in millions of units)
Company	2Q26 Shipments	2Q26 Market Share	2Q25 Shipments	2Q25 Market Share	2Q26/2Q25 Growth
1. Lenovo	16.6	24.4%	17.0	23.7%	-2.1%
2. HP Inc	13.0	19.1%	14.3	19.9%	-9.0%
3. Dell Technologies	9.3	13.6%	9.8	13.6%	-5.0%
4. Apple	6.7	9.9%	6.1	8.5%	10.1%
5. ASUS	5.0	7.4%	5.0	7.0%	0.2%
Others	17.5	25.7%	19.6	27.3%	-10.5%
Total	68.2	100.0%	71.7	100.0%	-4.9%
Source: IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, July 8, 2026

The fact that Apple managed to increase its shipments versus the prior year despite facing the same cost pressures and rising component/memory prices shows that products such as the Neo can still find success in these dire times. The MacBook Neo did incur a price hike, but it is still a hot seller across retail outlets.

Various x86 vendors introduced their latest lineups at CES 2026 and Computex 2026, with an aim at the budget segment. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and ASUS all have PCs rolling out with Intel's newest Wildcat Lake "Core Series 3" chips, which are designed to compete with the MacBook Neo, while AMD's refreshes also offer competitive value. Despite that, it looks like x86 vendors have failed to market and attract their latest round of PCs to the audience.

The other problem is supply; we haven't seen many of these options yet on retail channels. The Intel Core Series 3 laptops were supposed to be available in plenty of volume, but there are still only a few products listed online, and many are yet to be shipped. Older Core Series 2 and Core Series 1 products also ramped up, but the prices are yet to achieve an attractive positioning. It is not that the chips are bad; it's the availability and prices that are now the main factor, and Apple is going all-out to secure additional memory supply, even lobbying the US Government to adopt Chinese memory.

x86 PC makers need to start rethinking their strategy, as waiting until 2028 isn't going to be a good option for them. The rising AI demand and the need for local compute to tackle higher cloud subscription costs are one way to drive consumer interest, but unless a bolder strategy is adopted, the PC refresh cycles can face a major risk, driving the shipments even further down.

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