Global notebook shipments are forecast to fall by a low-single-digit percentage in 2027. The risk to the laptop market is shifting from a shortage of components to buyers who will not pay higher prices for them.
That outlook comes from TrendForce’s latest notebook industry research, published on October 8. If DRAM and CPU prices stay elevated and brands pass more of the cost on to buyers, longer replacement cycles could push the full-year decline into the high-single-digit range.
The warning follows a rough third quarter, when the PC market fell more than 20% year over year as pulled-forward demand faded and higher component costs reached retail prices.
Brands Cannot Hold Price, Specs, and Margins at the Same Time
Notebook shipments got help in 2026 from better CPU availability, early procurement by brands, and some replacement purchases pulled forward from later in the year. TrendForce says that does not point to a real recovery in end-market demand. Purchases planned for the second half of 2026 and beyond have already happened, so replacement momentum is likely to weaken.
Brands are also running out of cheaper inventory, which leaves them facing the full effect of rising CPU, DRAM, and SSD prices. For a mainstream notebook with a $900 MSRP, those three components made up about 68% of the bill of materials cost in the third quarter of 2026.
Brands face three trade-offs, and TrendForce says every option carries a cost for them:
- Raise retail prices, which risks weaker demand.
- Absorb the higher costs, which squeezes gross margins.
- Cut specifications such as memory capacity, which can undermine how competitive the notebook looks.
TrendForce does not expect brands to hold pricing, specifications, and profitability all at once in 2027. How much of the cost reaches consumers will decide where demand lands.
In the better case, brands limit retail price increases by adjusting product mix and specifications while absorbing part of the cost, and the decline stays in the low-single-digit range. In the worse case, component costs keep climbing and are fully passed on to buyers, which moves the drop into the high-single-digit range.
Production Is Shifting Back to China While Component Supply Stays Uneven
Higher costs are also changing where notebooks get built. TrendForce estimates notebook production outside China will fall from about 24% of the global total in 2025 to 21% in 2026, and it could slip below 20% in 2027. If tariff pressure does not get worse, brands are likely to weigh production cost, supply-chain completeness, and efficiency more heavily than policy risk. Some capacity set up elsewhere for diversification could move back to China.
Component supply will not be even either. DRAM supply is likely to stay tight because AI server applications keep absorbing advanced-process capacity, and PC DRAM faces limited supply growth. NAND Flash constraints might ease in the second half of 2027 as new capacity comes online.
PCBs, MLCCs, and PMICs are under pressure too, from capacity allocation decisions, raw material costs, and geopolitical issues. TrendForce says that could mean higher prices or longer lead times for brands.
Our Take
When CPU, DRAM, and SSD make up to 68% of a laptop’s cost, there is very little room to hide an increase, and Apple has already shown that. It raised Mac prices in June, which moved the MacBook Neo from $599 to $699 for most buyers.
The same memory squeeze sits behind TrendForce’s iPhone 18 Pro price forecast, so higher prices are not limited to notebooks. A 2027 outlook like this puts pressure on every laptop maker, and the touchscreen MacBook Pro expected on October 27 will be an early test of how much buyers will pay.
