{"id":799889,"date":"2026-10-12T06:02:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/799889\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T06:02:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:02:31","slug":"ai-was-supposed-to-sell-pcs-instead-pc-shipments-just-crashed-20-as-ai-eats-the-worlds-ram-and-windows-11s-copilot-agents-arent-convincing-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/799889\/","title":{"rendered":"AI was supposed to sell PCs. Instead, PC shipments just crashed 20% as AI eats the world\u2019s RAM, and Windows 11\u2019s Copilot agents aren\u2019t convincing buyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PC<\/a><\/p>\n

Global PC shipments fell about 20% year-over-year in Q3 2026, with Omdia estimating a 21.2% drop and IDC a 20.1% drop, as PC makers worked through stock they bought early and buyers balked at prices inflated by memory and storage costs. Even Apple shipped 11.3% fewer Macs, according to both trackers.<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, the crash comes when Windows 11 is in its best shape in years. Also, in case you\u2019ve been living in a cave for the past 2 years, the entire PC market (including Apple) is doubling down on AI, which was the whole reason for the PC shipments debacle.<\/p>\n

That said, Windows 11 just got a trick that can reduce a PC\u2019s dependence on the universally despised Data Centers.<\/p>\n

PC shipments plunged 20% as memory prices hit buyers<\/p>\n

Omdia<\/a> estimates that 58.1 million desktops, notebooks and workstations shipped in worldwide in Q3 2026, down from 73.7 million a year ago. This should be terrifying to PC OEMs because it\u2019s the steepest annual decline since Q1 2023. IDC<\/a> puts Q3 shipments at 62.7 million, down from 78.5 million.<\/p>\n

Yes, the two numbers don\u2019t match precisely, because they each have their trackers. However, they agree on what went wrong:<\/p>\n

\"IDC<\/p>\n

PC shipments in Q3 2026 fell below Q2, breaking the usual pattern<\/p>\n

Q3 is normally bigger than Q2, but IDC says shipments dropped 9.1% from 69 million in Q2. It\u2019s also the second straight quarter of annual decline, after Q2 dipped 3.8%. Omdia also has some interesting (I mean, daunting) findings:<\/p>\n

Desktop shipments fell 23.5% to 11.7 million
\nNotebook shipments fell 20.6% to 46.4 million
\nVendors and their ODM partners started cutting production in Q3<\/p>\n

Ironically, the PC industry did it to itself. OEMs and channel partners stocked up on inventory in the first half of 2026, likely to get ahead of memory-driven price hikes, and Q3 was left with very little demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cVendors and channels loaded up on inventory early in the year to get ahead of price hikes, and that has thrown off the usual seasonality, where Q3 is typically larger than Q2,\u201d says Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC.<\/p>\n

Omdia\u2019s Research Director Ishan Dutt says leading OEMs had already forecast double-digit declines for the second half, while retailers reported double-digit jumps in average selling prices combined with falling sales!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Dutt explains.<\/p>\n

\"PC<\/p>\n

The parts inside a $699 PC now cost $699<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d says Ben Yeh, Principal Analyst at Omdia.<\/p>\n

Omdia\u2019s cost breakdown shows what has now happened to a mainstream PC that sold for $699 in Q1 2025:<\/p>\n

Mainstream PC ($699 in Q1 2025)
\nQ1 2025
\nQ2 2026
\nQ3 2026<\/p>\n

Total parts cost
\n$435
\n$665
\n$699<\/p>\n

Memory share of parts cost
\n5%
\n16%
\n20%<\/p>\n

Storage share of parts cost
\n11%
\n23%
\n22%<\/p>\n

Memory and storage combined (approx.)
\n$70
\n$259
\n$294<\/p>\n

Processor share of parts cost
\n30%
\n22%
\n21%<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Basically, memory and storage combined is responsible for roughly $224 of the $264 jump in parts cost.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d be wrong if you thought the premium or high-end PCs are unaffected. I\u2019m not sure how OEMs will strategize their sales because for some high-end tier PCs, the parts now cost more than what the whole PC sold for in early 2025:<\/p>\n

PC tier (retail price in Q1 2025)
\nParts cost in Q1 2025
\nParts cost in Q3 2026
\nIncrease<\/p>\n

Entry (under $500)
\n$275
\n$471
\n71%<\/p>\n

Mainstream ($699)
\n$435
\n$699
\n61%<\/p>\n

High-end ($1,099)
\n$774
\n$1,242
\n60%<\/p>\n

Premium (over $1,500)
\n$1,234
\n$1,898
\n54%<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that these are component costs, so they don\u2019t include assembly, shipping or the PC maker\u2019s margin.\u00a0\"PC<\/p>\n

Memory isn\u2019t the only problem, either. Omdia says shortages of processors, graphics cards and other chips are making inventory harder to manage. In high-end and premium PCs, graphics memory (GDDR) went from 5% to 16% of the parts cost. Yeh says PC makers have raised prices multiple times, but those increases \u201chave yet to fully offset the impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

HP took the biggest hit, while Apple and Asus gained market share<\/p>\n

Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Asus kept their spots in the top five, but every one of them shipped fewer PCs, according to Omdia.<\/p>\n

\"WorldwideWorldwide desktop and notebook shipments 3Q26. Source: Omdia<\/p>\n

HP lost 2.6 points of market share in a single year. Apple shipped 11.3% fewer Macs but still gained share, and Omdia credits Cupertino\u2019s premium positioning for limiting the impact of higher prices. Asus had the smallest decline among the top five.<\/p>\n

IDC\u2019s data also paints the same picture. Lenovo, HP and Dell fell faster than the market and together gave up 4.2 points of share, while Asus dropped the least at 8.6%.<\/p>\n

\"WorldwideWorldwide PC shipments (millions of units). Source: IDC
\nPC prices will stay high in 2026, even with discounts<\/p>\n

Channels are now stuck with inventory in a market where high prices are killing demand, so IDC says promotions are possible. Just don\u2019t expect 2025 prices!<\/p>\n

\u201cThat could translate into promotions and some short-term relief for consumers, but we don\u2019t expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago. Prices will remain elevated,\u201d Ubrani says. He adds that with macro conditions worsening, \u201cthe risk is that the outlook for the next few quarters gets worse before it gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Omdia expects PC shipments to fall another 24% year-over-year in Q4 2026 and 7% in 2027, and Yeh warns that \u201cthe current decline may be just the beginning of a new downward cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Windows 11 is getting better, but cheaper PCs are getting harder to build<\/p>\n

After a 2025 full of broken updates, Microsoft promised to fix Windows 11<\/a> in March, and Satya Nadella repeated it in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In our testing, my three-year-old 16GB laptop used up to 2GB less RAM after a restart on Windows 11 26H2<\/a>, and apps opened noticeably faster.<\/p>\n

\"WindowsWindows 11 lower RAM usage after installing 26H2 update. Credit: Windows Latest<\/p>\n

The July update<\/a> sped up shutdowns and File Explorer, and Marcus Ash says Insiders can feel Windows 11 speeding up<\/a> in Experimental builds.<\/p>\n

The September update<\/a> lets you remove web results from Search, which made it crazy fast in our testing<\/a>. Microsoft is now testing a Search rebuilt on WinUI 3<\/a>, and WinUI\u2019s latest experimental release added table and chart controls and a memory fix<\/a>, after years of developers picking web wrappers, exclusively for Windows!<\/p>\n

The bigger promise is optimizing Windows 11 for 8GB PCs<\/a> by the end of 2026, and Windows boss Pavan Davuluri cited the rising cost of memory<\/a> as the reason. OEMs are bringing back 8GB laptops, but one 8GB PC owner said RAM usage was still at 96% on 26H2, so the 8GB work probably hasn\u2019t shipped yet, as far as I know. When it does, cheap laptops could finally feel usable.<\/p>\n

Of course, faster software won\u2019t make DRAM cheaper. If anything, a better Windows 11 gives people one more reason to keep their current PC a little longer.<\/p>\n

Microsoft wants local AI on PCs, but the AI boom is making PCs more expensive<\/p>\n

IDC blames the higher prices on the \u201cAI data center build out.\u201d On October 7, Microsoft held its first big Windows event in two years<\/a> and spent most of it on AI, and the comments under the livestream and on X were mostly people asking Microsoft to fix Windows instead.<\/p>\n

\"HybridHybrid Intelligence capabilities in Copilot+ PCs. Image: Microsoft<\/p>\n

To be fair, the pitch was different this time. With hybrid intelligence<\/a>, Davuluri says Windows will run AI on your PC \u201cwhere it makes sense\u201d and in the cloud \u201cwhen it needs to.\u201d In theory, every task that runs locally is one less request for a data center, and data centers are what\u2019s eating the world\u2019s memory supply.<\/p>\n

Local AI needs a lot of memory, too. Surface Laptop Ultra<\/a> starts at $2,599.99 with 24GB, but Microsoft\u2019s AI benchmarks<\/a> used the 64GB model, which costs $4,299.99.<\/p>\n

\"SurfaceSurface Laptop Ultra vs MacBook Pro M5 Pro<\/p>\n

I suspect Microsoft or NVIDIA is eating some of that cost, or it\u2019s an introductory price. The 128GB Surface costs $5,899.99, while ASUS\u2019s ProArt P14 goes up to around $6,500<\/a> with 128GB.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s Surface RTX Spark Dev Box<\/a> costs $5,999 with 128GB, which is more than the laptop. Sure, it has an extra 1TB of storage, but it has no display, keyboard or battery!<\/p>\n

\"SurfaceSurface RTX Spark Dev Box in action
\nPC makers need to give people a reason to upgrade<\/p>\n

Apple has Apple Intelligence, Windows 11 has agents, and shipments are down for both. In my opinion, PC makers and Microsoft mistook their own excitement about AI for what buyers want. AI PCs were supposed to start an upgrade wave, and instead, people are holding on to what they have.<\/p>\n

Windows 11 is finally fixing the basics. Now the industry needs a PC that does the basics well at a price people can pay, with AI as a bonus instead of the monotonous AI this, AI that sales pitch.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tand help our independent reporting reach more people.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global PC shipments fell about 20% year-over-year in Q3 2026, with Omdia estimating a 21.2% drop and IDC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-799889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}