Memory Prices Are Tanking PC Shipments, But There's A Surprise Silver Lining

Look, we all know what time it is and so whenever a market research firm releases a report on the state of PC shipments, we pretty much know the gist of it. So it goes again, with Omdia's latest reporting highlighting yet another quarterly decline in combined desktop, laptop, and workstation shipments, though hidden in the newest gloom and doom status update is a silver lining, albeit a small one.

We'll get to that, but first let's cover the numbers. According to Omdia, PC shipments fell 3.6% year-over-year to 65.7 million units in the second quarter of 2026, continuing a trend of market slumps we've been tracking all year long. Taking laptops out of the equations, desktops and workstations fell a little less sharply, declining 1.3% to 13.9 million units, while laptops slid 4.2% to 51.7 million units.

Those figures at face value are not all that alarming, but that's mainly because they are a singular quarterly snapshot. Every quarter pretty much echoes the same story, and it's because there is an AI-driven shortage of memory and storage chips in the consumer space. Chip makers are far more focused on the more lucrative data center market, to the point where Micron wound down its Crucial division that was popular among consumers.

"The sharp increase in memory and storage prices during the first quarter of the year had a significant impact on product pricing in the second quarter," said Ben Yeh, Principal Analyst at Omdia. "It also prompted consumers and IT decision makers to bring forward their PC purchases to mitigate the risk of further price increases. Although sales volumes were maintained at a stable level, the risk of a subsequent downturn remains."

We are now past that wave of sales where businesses and, to some extent, consumers tried to get ahead of continued price increases, so it wouldn't surprise us if the next few quarters saw bigger declines in shipments. Time will tell.

So, what about that small silver lining?

"Although the pace of memory and storage cost increases is forecast to ease significantly in 2H26, PC selling prices will continue to reflect the upstream component inflation from 2Q26," Omdia says.

Usually when chip makers or market analysts talk about memory prices, they point to relief still being more than a year away, and sometimes much more. That might still be the case, but if you're looking to sip from a glass that is half full, it's that Omdia's research suggests that these wild price increases will "ease significantly" in the back half of 2026.

Don't confuse that to mean we will see memory and storage prices fall back to pre-crunch levels. In almost the same breath, Omdia notes that neither component is projected to see a reverse in pricing this year. Furthermore, the firm says other key components are becoming more expensive, such as multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) and printed circuit boards (PCBs).

The takeaway is that we are far from out of the woods, but at least this latest status report is a little less dire than ones that have come before it.