Global PC shipments rose by 9.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, however, it is unlikely those increases will continue, due in part to a pending memory shortage that will impact both enterprise and consumer markets. IDC stated in a release that it expects that the PC market will be far different in 12 months, given how quickly the memory situation is evolving. “The results cap off a tumultuous year for the PC market, marked by the end of support for Windows 10, which drove a wave of upgrade demand, and early year tariff concerns that prompted vendors to pull forward more inventory than originally planned,” it said. Memory shortages, said Jitesh Ubrani , research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, “are affecting the entire industry, and the impact will likely reshape market dynamics over the next two years.” In a report released last month, IDC stated, “the global semiconductor ecosystem is experiencing an unprecedented memory chip shortage with knock-on effects for the device manufacturers and end users that could persist well into 2027. DRAM prices have surged significantly as demand from AI data centers continues to outstrip supply, creating a supply/demand imbalance.” Demand will keep PC prices high this year The memory market, the authors of the report stated, is at “an unprecedented inflexion point, with demand materially outpacing supply. For an industry that has long been characterized by boom-and-bust cycles, this time is different. The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure and workloads is exerting significant pressure on the memory ecosystem.” Soaring RAM prices may impact the enterprise PC market for some time; Theo Antoniadis , principal advisory director at Info-Tech Research Group, said he expects that demand will keep prices high through 2026 and well into 2027, “which may impact the PC prices by up to 20%. I suspect that there will be winners and losers in the PC and smartphone space.” He said, “[vendors] that have set up hedging (for example, long-term supply contracts) and are shipping higher volumes and sitting on larger cash reserves will win. Those that rely on price as their competitive advantage, living on low margins, or [are] smaller players will suffer through this period.” Asked whether large enterprises are still renewing their laptop fleets every three years and desktops every five or if they are making them last longer, he replied that he suspects they’re in denial. “I have not heard many clients discussing this, as their budgets for 2026 were set last quarter (Q4 2025).” However, added Antoniadis, “I suspect there will be some pivoting and reduced purchases when sticker shock hits on their refresh quotes. Unless the pricing starts to reduce, my dark horse bet for 2027 is a resurgence in VDI with very light PCs and another push for cloud-based solutions to counter potential productivity loss for obsolete PCs.” Jean Philippe Bouchard , research vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said, “beyond the obvious pressure on prices of systems already announced by certain manufacturers, we might also see PC memory specifications lowered on average to preserve memory inventory on hand. The year ahead is shaping up to be extremely volatile.” As last month’s IDC report stated, “the shortage threatens to derail the industry’s growth narrative around AI PC. IDC defines the AI PC as any PC with an NPU. Crucially, these devices tend to have more RAM (Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs require a minimum of 16GB).” As more small language models and large language models move onto the device, its authors wrote, “memory becomes even more important, with many higher-end systems shifting toward 32GB or higher. Just as the industry is seeing a need to add more RAM, it has become prohibitively expensive to do so, even if they can get supply. This will result in higher prices, lower margins, or a potential downmix in the amount of RAM in new systems at the worst possible time for this to occur.” In addition, Ubrani said the demand for AI PCs within the enterprise over the past one to two years “has been somewhat wavering even without the memory shortage. A lot of that has been because cloud options are so good, many people can’t tell the difference between cloud AI versus on-device AI .” He predicted that, as a result of the shortage, vendors will “start to push a story that is more about hybrid AI,” because due to the memory shortage, “some of these systems may not be able to run the latest AI applications.” But will large enterprises pay a premium for AI PCS (or Copilot PCs) or, conversely, attempt to strong-arm their suppliers into making lower-cost SKUs available should they opt to head in that direction? Antoniadis said, “I don’t think [they] have the leverage to counter market forces for AI PCs. The fortunate ones are going to be those who have existing long-term vendor agreements in place.”