---
title: "Memory crisis hits the market: PC shipments drop for the first time in a year"
description: "The PC market has dropped for the first time in a year: shipments fell by 4% due to the memory crisis and rising prices. 📉 Lenovo, HP, and Dell are losing ground, although Apple and Asus are showing growth. Buyers are increasingly receiving cut-down configurations with DDR4 instead of DDR5. 💻🚫"
date: 2026-07-24T13:10:27.000Z
lang: en
url: https://xab.info/en/posts/memory-crisis-hits-the-market-pc-shipments-drop-for-the-first-time-in-a-year
tags: [counterpoint, pc-market, memory-crisis, dell, hp, lenovo, apple, asus]
publisher: "XAB.info"
---

# Memory crisis hits the market: PC shipments drop for the first time in a year

![Gaming PC build with Gigabyte, EVGA, and Intel components surrounded by product boxes — illustrating memory crisis and drop in PC shipments](https://xab.info/media/2026/07/24/krizis-pamyati-udaril-po-rynku-pk-postavki-upali/krizis-pamyati-udaril-po-rynku-pk-postavki-upali-1.webp)

The personal computer market, which has long ignored warning signs, has finally faced the real consequences of the global memory crisis. A new study by analytics firm Counterpoint confirms: global PC shipments have declined for the first time since the first quarter of 2025. In the second quarter of the current year, global shipments were 4% lower than in the same period a year ago.

These data fully correlate with an early IDC report published at the beginning of the month. Experts link the decline to two factors: a sharp rise in prices for key components and a subsequent cooling of consumer demand. Although commercial upgrade cycles related to migration to Windows and the adoption of AI PCs continue to support the market, the rapid rise in memory prices and increased component costs are increasingly limiting OEM production plans.

### Economics favor the premium segment

The sharp increase in DRAM prices has significantly increased the Bill of Materials (BOM) cost for PCs. This forces manufacturers to make tough decisions: raise retail prices, cut budget configurations, or redirect resources to more profitable premium systems. In other words, technology has become too expensive for the mass buyer, despite the need for a modern PC to work in Windows 11 and the era of large language models.

The year-on-year decline in shipments was unevenly distributed among market leaders. Traditional giants showed a decline: Lenovo — by 2%, HP — by 8%, and Dell — by 6%. At the same time, Asus and Apple managed to show growth: the former by 4%, and the latter — immediately by 13%, likely due to the success of the affordable MacBook Neo model. However, given the total shipment volume of the brands, this growth did not compensate for the overall picture, and the market still went into negative territory.

### Gaming PCs and memory compromises

Until recently, prices for gaming PCs remained at an acceptable level even after the start of the memory crisis. Probably, system builders were selling off stocks of components purchased before the price increase. But now that stocks are depleted, buyers are facing reality. When something at a reasonable price is finally found, it more often contains DDR4 memory instead of DDR5, or only one DDR5 stick in single-channel mode.

Thus, the decline in global shipments in the second quarter looks like a logical outcome of a long accumulation of problems. Manufacturers, forced to balance between cost and demand, are gradually reducing supply, which inevitably affects the availability of technology for the end consumer.