For companies looking to upgrade PCs this year, gear up: laptops will be more costly and configurations slower, analysts said.

PC makers “are already signaling price increases across the board and likely memory spec downgrades, especially in entry-level devices,” said Rishi Padhi, principal analyst at Gartner.

Low-cost laptops offering decent performance won’t come anytime soon, thanks to shortages in chips and memory. “With the RAM required for Windows 11 and Copilot+ now being much costlier, the price increase and scarcity in supply makes it difficult to deliver sub-$600 laptops without compromising user experience,” Padhi said.

The price increase for components is accelerating when compared to the last quarter of 2025. Tariffs are also a factor.

“Many PC components come from overseas suppliers, and the PC vendors can’t just eat all the tariffs that are imposed on them,” said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

The 2026 PC market “is shaping up to be extremely volatile,” said IDC research vice president Jean Philippe Bouchard in a press release. Like Gartner, IDC attributes this year’s price shock to shortages of components that include CPUs and memory components.

This supply constraint is structural and persistent, not cyclical, and may last well into 2027, Gartner’s Padhi said.

“This dynamic is delaying true AI PC experiences into the premium segment, limiting mass market adoption, and forcing vendors to either raise prices or reduce specifications to protect margins,” Padhi said.

The higher prices put companies in a bind on upgrading to PCs with AI capabilities, said Gold. AI is still mostly done through browsers in the cloud, and not on PCs, so companies may not be tempted to upgrade to AI PCs.

“There really isn’t any ‘killer app’ outside of what I can do through a web browser. Copilot [Microsoft’s AI assistant] is fine, but do I want to go out and spend $1,000 on a new machine to use that feature?” Gold said.

The price increase is also partially due to a heavier concentration on supplies of higher-end units, not the lower-priced systems that consumers often buy. That’s like SUVs dominating car supplies, Gold said.

“Even Chromebooks are experiencing issues as the vendors are moving to supply higher-price PCs rather than building lower-end Chromebooks,” he said.

PC shipments blew past expectations in 2025, growing by 9.1% to 270 million units compared to 2024, according to Gartner. The expiration of Windows 10, users’ and companies’ desire to futureproof their systems, and a rush to upgrade hardware before tariffs took effect drove shipments.

AI PCs benefitted from the Windows 11 upgrade push in 2025. Microsoft coaxed companies to upgrade to systems with the Copilot+ moniker, indicating PCs capable of running AI tools locally.

Microsoft will embed more AI features into its Windows 11 PCs over 2026 and 2027, but Copilot+ will likely become a broader user experience, as opposed to a hardware selling point, Gartner’s Padhi said.

AI demand in servers and general large language model (LLM) requirements are also driving PC prices up, Padhi said.

Memory makers are concentrating on the production of memory for data centers, which are using the far more lucrative high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI applications. The scarcity leads to higher memory prices and limited PC features as computer makers pass the cost on to consumers, Padhi said.

Intel and AMD have already said their PC processors are in short supply and they can’t meet the full demand. The companies are working to increase supplies.

According to Gartner, Lenovo was the top PC vendor in 2025, with shipments totaling 73.6 million units and a 27.2% market share. Lenovo’s 2025 shipments went up by 17.6% compared to 2024.

HP was the second-largest PC maker, with shipments totaling 57.4 million units in 2025, growing by 8.3%. The company had a 21.3% market share.

Third-place Dell shipped 41.3 million units, growing by 4.9%, and had a 15.3% market share. Apple was in fourth place with 25 million units, growing by 10.3%, with a 9.2% market share. Asus and Acer were in fifth and sixth place, respectively.

Related reading:

• Intel’s AI pivot could make lower-end PCs scarce in 2026
• Memory shortage threat helps trigger PC buying spree
• Buyer’s guide: How to choose the right business laptops
• Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC hype needs to end, analysts say
• What is an AI PC? The power of artificial intelligence on your desktop