Global PC shipments fell 21% in Q3 2026, and Apple fell far less. Counterpoint Research says the MacBook Neo cushioned the decline and helped Apple outperform the overall market.
Counterpoint’s Q3 2026 report was published on October 22 and counts 57 million PCs shipped worldwide. It is the third tracker to report Q3 numbers this month, after IDC and Omdia, and its 57 million is the lowest of the three.
Apple’s market share rose to 9.8% even as Mac shipments fell 11%
Counterpoint has Apple shipping 5.6 million Macs in Q3 2026, down 11% from a year earlier. Apple’s share of the market climbed from 8.7% to 9.8%. The top five finished like this:
- Lenovo: 26.3% share, down 23%
- HP: 18.1% share, down 31%
- Dell: 13.3% share, down 25%
- Apple: 9.8% share, down 11%
- ASUS: 9.2% share, down 7%
All other vendors made up the remaining 23.3% of the market, with shipments down 16%. Minsoo Kang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, says Apple and ASUS held up better than the market through differentiated product portfolios and competitive positioning.
Counterpoint’s 5.6 million Macs compares with 5.9 million from IDC and 6.8 million from Omdia. The trackers disagree on units, but all three have Apple down about 11% in a market that shrank by roughly a fifth.
Memory and SSD prices pushed PC prices up and demand down
Higher component costs raised PC prices in Q3 2026, which discouraged people from upgrading and weakened demand across the industry. According to Counterpoint’s data, contract prices for 8GB DDR4 RAM modules rose 24% from the previous quarter, and 1TB NVMe SSD prices rose 29%.
PC makers have been passing those costs on. Apple raised Mac prices in June, which moved the MacBook Neo from $599 to $699 for most buyers.
Counterpoint expects the decline to deepen to 27% in Q4
Counterpoint forecasts the PC market falling 27% in Q4 2026, a steeper drop than the 21% in Q3.
The firm expects RAM prices to rise another 13% in Q4 and 15% in Q1 2027. SSD prices are projected to increase 11% in Q4 before stabilizing in early 2027.
