New research from Omdia estimates worldwide shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations fell 21.2% year-on-year in 3Q26 to 58.1 million units, as earlier “pull-forward” demand eased and higher component costs filtered through to end-market pricing.
In its 9 October report, Omdia said desktop shipments (including desktop workstations) declined 23.5% to 11.7 million units, while notebook shipments (including mobile workstations) fell 20.6% to 46.4 million units.
“After sustained pull-forward activity buoyed the PC market in the first half of the year, this sharp drop in shipment volumes comes as no surprise,” said Ishan Dutt, Research Director at Omdia. “The scale of the decline is consistent with what the industry signaled throughout the last earnings cycle, with leading OEMs forecasting double-digit unit contractions in H2 and retailers reporting double-digit increases in average selling prices (ASPs) alongside falling sales. The impact of upstream component cost increases has now fully worked its way through to end-market pricing, with consumers and IT decision-makers responding accordingly. On the supply side, vendors and their ODM partners began scaling back production in 3Q, while channel partners continued working through elevated inventory levels.”
Omdia said supply chain and inventory management challenges had intensified, citing continuing increases in memory and storage prices as well as shortages of processors, graphics cards and other IC components.
“The cost share of DRAM and SSDs in PCs has risen sharply from a typical level of around 15% to nearly 40%, with price increases more than fourfold,” said Ben Yeh, Principal Analyst at Omdia. “Although PC vendors have raised prices multiple times over the past few quarters, these increases have yet to fully offset the impact. These pressures are expected to persist, and the current decline may be just the beginning of a new downward cycle.”
Omdia forecasts the PC market will decline 24% year-on-year in 4Q26, with a further 7% decline expected for full-year 2027.
Despite double-digit declines among major vendors in 3Q26, Omdia said the vendor ranking was largely unchanged. Lenovo remained the top shipper with 14.9 million units and a 26% market share. HP, in second place, recorded the largest decline among the top vendors, down 31% year-on-year to 10.3 million units, with market share falling to 18%.
Dell held third position, shipping 7.6 million units for 13% of the market, according to Omdia. Apple shipped 6.8 million units, down 11% year-on-year, and gained more than one percentage point of share, which Omdia attributed to its premium positioning. Asus rounded out the top five with 5.4 million units and market share improving to 9.3% year-on-year.
