Numerous you panic-bought PCs to keep away from RAMaggedon 2026

The specter of price hikes brought on by the present AI-driven demand for reminiscence and storage seems to have satisfied a fair proportion of individuals to purchase a brand new pc. In keeping with information analyzed by Counterpoint Research, world PC shipments grew round 3.2 % year-over-year in Q1 2026, “pushed by pre-emptive shopping for earlier than memory-led worth will increase hit the retail degree” and Microsoft forcing some prospects to improve by ending support for Windows 10 last year.

Gross sales hit 63.3 million items through the first quarter, Counterpoint says, and have been notably concentrated in 5 high-end PC makers: Lenovo, ASUS, Apple, HP and Dell. Of the 5, Lenovo instructions essentially the most PC market share at 26 %, however gross sales elevated for nearly the entire corporations, save for HP, whose year-over-year gross sales technically declined by 5 %. Of explicit observe, Apple’s PC gross sales grew by 11 %, seemingly on the energy of the M5 updates it made to the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, and the introduction of the inexpensive $600 MacBook Neo. Counterpoint suggests the updates may drive even additional gross sales progress subsequent quarter.

Even with constructive gross sales, the PC business as a complete is under no circumstances out of the woods. “The aggressive enlargement in AI infrastructure funding is driving up total element prices, which can seemingly impression the pricing of CPUs and different key elements in [PCs],” Counterpoint Senior Analyst Minsoo Kang says. “Finally, the sustained upward stress on prices and the ensuing hike in retail costs are anticipated to have a big unfavourable impression on the PC market’s progress in 2026.”

A common sense that the worst is but to return is in line with what different analysts have warned in regards to the present shortages of RAM and storage. In December 2025, IDC predicted that PC shipments could drop as much as 8.9 percent in 2026 in response to the value of RAM, and later revised its prediction to 11.6 percent this previous March. Even when shoppers aren’t feeling the worst of those worth hikes simply but, new bulletins of worth will increase appear to reach like clockwork each few weeks — for instance, this week, Meta raised the price of its Quest headsets — which implies if they are not feeling them now, they may quickly.