The specter of worth hikes brought on by the present AI-driven demand for reminiscence and storage seems to have satisfied a justifiable share of individuals to purchase a brand new pc. In line with knowledge analyzed by Counterpoint Analysis, international PC shipments grew round 3.2 p.c year-over-year in Q1 2026, "pushed by pre-emptive shopping for earlier than memory-led worth will increase hit the retail stage" and Microsoft forcing some prospects to improve by ending help for Home windows 10 final yr.
Gross sales hit 63.3 million models in the course of the first quarter, Counterpoint says, and have been notably concentrated in 5 high-end PC makers: Lenovo, ASUS, Apple, HP and Dell. Of the 5, Lenovo instructions essentially the most PC market share at 26 p.c, however gross sales elevated for nearly all the corporations, save for HP, whose year-over-year gross sales technically declined by 5 p.c. Of explicit observe, Apple's PC gross sales grew by 11 p.c, probably on the energy of the M5 updates it made to the MacBook Professional and MacBook Air, and the introduction of the reasonably priced $600 MacBook Neo. Counterpoint suggests the updates may drive even additional gross sales development subsequent quarter.
Even with constructive gross sales, the PC business as an entire is certainly not out of the woods. "The aggressive enlargement in AI infrastructure funding is driving up total element prices, which can probably affect the pricing of CPUs and different key parts in [PCs]," Counterpoint Senior Analyst Minsoo Kang says. "In the end, the sustained upward strain on prices and the ensuing hike in retail costs are anticipated to have a major detrimental affect on the PC market’s development in 2026."
A common sense that the worst is but to come back is according to what different analysts have warned concerning the present shortages of RAM and storage. In December 2025, IDC predicted that PC shipments may drop as a lot as 8.9 p.c in 2026 in response to the worth of RAM, and later revised its prediction to 11.6 p.c this previous March. Even when shoppers aren't feeling the worst of those worth hikes simply but, new bulletins of worth will increase appear to reach like clockwork each few weeks — for instance, this week, Meta raised the worth of its Quest headsets — which suggests in the event that they aren't feeling them now, they may quickly.
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