New research data from Omdia shows U.S. shipments of desktop PCs and laptops fell by 7% year on year in Q1 of this year, totaling just 15.8 million devices. Compounded at both ends, this figure comes from strong Q1 2025 sales as companies and individuals rushed to get ahead of President Trump's tariffs, and the ongoing component shortages, which have driven up prices to unreasonable levels for just about everything.
This decline is the worst since the end of 2023, and is most evident in the lower-end segment. As prices have risen, people haven't been able to buy as many new systems, and those they do buy are more expensive. Average PC prices are predicted to exceed $1,000 by the end of the year, alongside consecutive year-on-year declines in overall sales.
The silver lining to all this is that it isn't projected to last forever. Omdia's data suggests PC sales will start to recover in 2027, and by 2028, are estimated to reach similar levels to 2025, driven by a resurgence in consumer spending. Funnily enough, that coincides with when we're expecting to see new memory fabs come online.
These predictions largely line up with a report from IDC from earlier this year, but even that pessimistic outlook on the year didn't have average selling prices crossing $1,000 so soon.
Pricing everyone out
Nobody who's considered or purchased an upgrade for their PC or laptop in the past year is unaware of price rises, but Omdia's data makes it very clear: ultra budget computing is being eaten alive by component shortages. Shipments of sub-$500 PCs declined 18.7 year on year for the first quarter of 2026. This stat is a key driver of the 14.4% drop in PC shipments when compared to 2025.
You may like
That's because people are just buying less, rather than buying more expensive systems. Although Omdia tracked an average 4% increase in PC selling prices in Q1, that isn't even remotely reflective of the price rises we've seen on individual components and systems. We've been reporting on these individual component price rises for months, with consistent memory supply shortages, which can be linked to production of HBM, over commodity DRAM. This has caused memory prices to increase by hundreds of percent; almost all major PC makers, including Apple, have faced price hikes on their products.
This has led to the average price of a PC set to reach over $1,000 for the first time this year. Prices are expected to increase 12% year on year in Q2, rising as high as 15% by Q4 2026.
It's not just consumers driving this, though. With businesses looking to buy up "AI PCs," capable of handling local language model processing, they're spending more to get them. The overall share of AI PCs grew to 44% in Q1 this year, though that could also be because manufacturers' definitions of an AI PC have been fairly fast and loose.
Who gets the biggest deckchair?
While the whole PC industry is shuddering under the dual icebergs of component shortages and price increases, the pricing problems are affecting the major manufacturers differently, and it's resulted in a rearranging of who's on top. Where HP was firmly the ruler of the roost last year, it has fallen, losing close to four percent in market share, leaving just enough room for Dell to take the crown.
With 25% of the overall PC market, and the only company to show serious positive growth over this period, Dell shipped more systems than Apple and Acer combined in Q1 2026. Lenovo also managed to ship slightly more systems than this time last year, securing it a firm third place in the line-up, and now nipping at HP's heels.
What to read next
Outside of Lenovo and Dell, though, everyone else took a hit. HP is down, Acer is down, and even Apple is down 1.6% year on year. The nebulous "others" category that contains other major and minor manufacturers declined dramatically, too, falling over 13% year on year.
Prediction is difficult, especially about the future
Omdia's research suggests that for those holding off on buying in 2026, the next year might be when they decide to bite the bullet anyway. The education sector is forecast for a massive near-29% drop in 2026 annual growth for PC shipments, but as far as Omdia sees it, it's coming back strong next year.
In 2027, Omdia predicts a large 21.3% increase in annual PC shipments. That might occur more towards the end of the year, when pricing and availability might have improved a little, and we'll have new g enerations of CPUs from AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm to play around with. That should help make existing devices more affordable. Although next-generation devices are likely to use more memory, so here's hoping component prices have stabilized at least a little by then.
But it's not just the economically-minded education sector that is set for a resurgence. Omdia predicts just about everyone will be more inclined to buy a new PC in 2027. Consumer confidence could return with a 7.5% growth over the year. That's coming off the back of a weak 2026, but it might be the start of when things may begin normalizing once more.
Ultimately, Omdia believes it will take until 2029 before we see U.S. PC shipments reach their 2025 levels, showcasing just how damaging the AI buildout has been on one of America's most reliable industries of the past few decades.
eSIM Studios
No comments