2025 was a particularly weird year for the PC market. We started it with a new generation of Nvidia and AMD cards and tariff worries, and ended it with the start of a memory crisis and, err, tariff worries. Preliminary reports suggest that PC sales ended strongly, but also suggest that 2026 could be much worse
A report sent to PC Gamer by the Internal Data Corporation claims a 9.6% growth year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, but it "expects that the PC market will be far different in 12 months given how quickly the memory situation is evolving." IDC's research vice president, Jean Philippe Bouchard, said: "Beyond the obvious pressure on prices of systems, already announced by certain manufacturers, we might also see PC memory specifications be lowered on average to preserve memory inventory on hand. The year ahead is shaping up to be extremely volatile.”
