PC shipments drop by over 20% as prices spiral, with HP and Dell taking biggest hit

What happened

The combination of pulled-in volume and growing supply constraints pushing up prices shrank demand in Q3, according to IDC, resulting in only 62.7 million units being shipped compared to 78.5 million in Q3 2025. Worldwide PC shipments fall 20% in Q3 2026, as inventory pull-in hangover and supply constraints come back to bite HP, Dell, and others. HP is a computer hardware and software company based in Palo Alto.

Worldwide PC shipments fell 20.1% year-on-year (YoY), from last year’s 78.5 million to 62.7 million units in the third quarter (Q3) of this year, according to preliminary results from IDC Research. Compared to Q2 2026, shipments have also slipped 9.1%, which is abnormal for this quarter.

According to IDC, the earlier inventory pull-in period when PC brands encouraged customers to buy new machines before available memory supply dried up, is now biting back. In addition to the aforementioned figures, Q3 2026 also shows the second straight quarterly decline compared to last year, as Q2 marked a 3.8% drop compared to Q2 2025.