PC shipments saw a sharp decline of around 20% in the third quarter of 2026, analysts reported this week.
The industry saw its “largest decline since the first quarter of 2023,” Omdia said in a statement today. Global shipments of laptops, desktops and workstations fell 21.2% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 58.1 million devices, the analyst said.
Shipments of desktop computers (including desktop workstations) decreased 23.5% to 11.7 million units, and shipments of laptop computers (including portable workstations) decreased 20.6% to 46.4 million, according to Omdia.
IDC shared similar findings. The analyst said this week that PC shipments fell 20.1% year-over-year to 62.7 million units, compared to 78.5 million in the third quarter of 2025.
The industry also shipped 9.1% fewer PCs in the third quarter of 2026 than in the second quarter of 2026, when 68.2 million units were shipped, per IDC.
The 20.1% year-over-year decline is the IDC’s largest decline ever in the third quarter of any year, the IDC said per PCMag.
The decline in shipments is also notable given that PC shipments in the third quarter typically exceed second quarter numbers.
“Looking across quarters, we’ve seen other quarters in recent years with larger declines, like Q4 2022, which was -28.2 percent, and Q1 2023, which was -28.7 percent. Both were coming off pandemic highs,” Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC, told PCMag.
In its announcement this week, IDC said many PC vendors and sales channels had stockpiled PC shipments earlier in the year in anticipation of rising memory prices. This means that demand remained minimal in the third quarter.
“(Sales) channels are now worried about stocking too much inventory in a market where high prices suppress demand,” Ubrani said in a statement.
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