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Gartner previously projected AI PCs would reach 50% market penetration before the end of the decade, but rising memory prices on premium-tier hardware will also push that milestone back to 2028. AI PCs, of course, require more onboard memory to run local inference workloads, making them especially exposed to DRAM cost increases.
Longer upgrade cycles will follow directly from higher prices, and Gartner says that PC lifetimes will extend by 15% for business buyers and 20% for consumers by the end of 2026, a trend it noted will raise concerns about security vulnerabilities on aging hardware.
For the PC market, demand will increasingly concentrate at the top end, where vendors carry enough margin to absorb component inflation without destroying profitability. Gartner advised vendors to accept unit volume decline rather than cut prices to chase budget buyers. "Overall, device vendors and channels face a critical window in the first half of 2026 to optimize pricing and protect margins before component inflation compresses profitability from the second quarter onwards," Atwal said.
The forecast covers smartphones as well, where shipments are projected to fall 8.4% this year. Gartner estimated basic smartphone buyers will exit the market five times faster than premium buyers in 2026 as rising costs push consumers toward refurbished or second-hand alternatives.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04, @04:51AM (2 children)
Gartner, having been wrong, doubles down on their claim -- in the future -- and makes a very similar claim to accompany the first, incorrect, claim.
Cool, dude.
If the bubble even keeps going in 2028. Sigh.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 04, @01:13PM
That org is like the weatherman, wrong half of the time but people don't care they'll keep right on watching.
Any advice that starts with "Gartner says..." can be disregarded out of hand. It came from Gartner so its almost certainly inaccurate in some way.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday March 05, @08:47AM
That's their (wrong) assumption, the bubble will continue to inflate forever. When it does pop, "AI" anything will be seen as toxic garbage and no-one will want "AI PCs" any more, and there'll be a massive glut of RAM and SSDs from cancelled data centres driving prices down. So a better prediction would be "entry-level PCs will be configured with registered ECC DDR5 bought at disposal auctions by 2028".