IDC warns of major slowdown in PC market due to memory shortage

The demand for the creation of AI infrastructure has been imposed PC component manufacturers has already led to death of a consumer brand of RAM, but a new report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) suggests that this could have an even more serious impact on the IT industry as a whole. In its worst-case scenario model, the IDC projects that PC shipments could decline by up to 8.9% in 2026 due to the high cost of memory.

“Instead of expanding conventional DRAM and NAND used in smartphones, PCs, and other consumer electronics, major memory makers have shifted production toward memory used in AI data centers, such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and high-capacity DDR5,” IDC writes. This continued to drive up the price of available RAM for PC makers, which naturally led them to raise the price of their own products to stay above water. For example, modular PC maker Framework has already I had to increase the prices on some of its laptops and spare parts, and says that “further cost and price increases are very likely over the coming months.” The IDC estimates that prices could rise 6% to 8% in 2026 if its most pessimistic scenario comes true.

The timing of this RAM crisis is particularly ironic because the sale “PC AI” – computers with neural processing units that can run AI models locally – were supposed to be one of the things that brought the IT industry out of its post-pandemic doldrums. Instead, the greater RAM requirements of these computers make them more vulnerable to the effects of the AI ​​industry itself. Computers aren’t the only electronic devices affected, either. According to the IDC, the average selling price of a smartphone could increase by 6 to 8 percent in its most pessimistic scenario, and smartphone shipments could decline by as much as 5.2 percent.

Companies like Apple and Samsung, with cash on hand and long-term supply agreements, could withstand these higher RAM prices and maintain consistency for a year or two, according to the IDC. For everyone else, however, the short term seems much more expensive and, of necessity, much less adventurous.