Negative PC Market for Everyone, But Not for Apple: The MacBook Neo Outsmarts the Competition
After a good first quarter of 2026, the PC market is beginning to slow down due to the memory crisis. Confirmation comes from a new IDC report. The slowdown compared to last year is evident.
In the Top 5, only Apple is growing, thanks to the MacBook Neo, while ASUS manages to close the quarter with numbers in line with last year. Small manufacturers are collapsing.
A Complicated Quarter
The second quarter of 2026 ended with a total of 68.2 million units shipped in the computer sector. The year-over-year decline is 4.9%.
Leading the market is Lenovo, with 16.6 million units shipped. The company recorded a decline lower than the market average, with a reduction of 2.1% year-over-year. In any case, Lenovo shipped almost 2 million more units compared to the second quarter of 2024. Things went much worse for HP (-9%) and Dell (-5%).
Apple, on the other hand, grew with 6.7 million units sold, thanks to the launch of the MacBook Neo, which debuted at the beginning of the quarter. The percentage growth is 10.1%. ASUS also manages to hold its ground, with a year-over-year increase of 0.2% in shipments.
The most significant drop concerns other manufacturers, which recorded a 10.5% reduction in shipments. The memory crisis is primarily damaging small manufacturers who have reduced bargaining power when negotiating component prices.
Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC, emphasized: "The real issue here is the discrepancy between units and dollars: shipments are declining, but revenues are increasing because suppliers are imposing price increases more rapidly than demand is decreasing. Given the worsening macroeconomic conditions and the memory shortage that is not expected to ease before early 2028, we do not anticipate another wave of inventory build-up, which indicates a sharp slowdown in growth rates in the second half of 2026. Suppliers are preparing for further price increases in 2027, and distribution channels are already reporting concerns about excess inventory at these higher prices."