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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) by Rich on Thursday March 05, @12:25AM (1 child)
...think different. (Pun intended). They just released the cheapest Mac ever, starting below $500 in the edu store.
The specs are absolutely entry level: phone SoC and 8GB of RAM (*1). Looks like they're going after school kids & students to broaden their market share, hoping that these will spec out the insanely priced (*2) gear later in their life or a little less later, when the swap file has killed the soldered-in SSD.
I'd place bets that some kind of sub $1000 Neo will be available in 2028, next to Chromebooks, and RasPis. If the Windows world wants to disappear by then, I won't mourn it, but I fear it will also still be there.
The good thing about all this is that millions of loud students will call out resource hogging applications, hopefully forcing vendors to make somewhat more efficient software - and thereby keeping our current machinery in the game for much longer. :)
*1 my 14 year old 2012 RMBP had 16GB (quad Ivy Bridge, 512 SSD; well, it was the high-end choice at 2800€), and that has been declared "unsupported vintage" many years ago.
*2 good spec MPB16 M5Max today:7300€
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Thursday March 05, @04:03AM
Vendors do not care - they just tell anyone who complains to buy a new computer every time, no matter how many millions complain.
If the school is against education and is forcing the students to run such proprietary malware, the students will either have to suffer the software running as slow as cold molasses, or buy a new computer and suffer the software running slow.