Rising memory and component costs are increasingly discouraging personal computer shoppers, prompting a majority to delay their purchases, UBS Securities said in a note emailed Tuesday.
Dynamic random-access memory and flash NAND memory costs have surged 766% and 471%, respectively, since the middle of 2025, the brokerage said. These higher costs are driving PC price hikes.
UBS surveyed 1,500 consumers in the US and China to analyze their intentions regarding PC purchases. About half of respondents plan to slow down such purchases due to higher memory prices, up from about 37% in the last survey, according to the note.
Some 19% intend to forego buying a PC altogether.
"Respondents expecting to spend more on their next PC rose (about 300 basis points) to (about) 63%, a survey high, likely reflecting the higher component cost dynamic," UBS analysts David Vogt and Andrew Spinola said.
The brokerage maintained its 2026 PC shipment outlook at 241.6 million units, which would be 11% down year on year. UBS now expects shipments to fall 4.1% in 2027 versus 2.1% growth previously projected, as memory inflation and higher central processing unit prices weigh on affordability.
"Due to memory costs likely to persist at high levels and CPU makers also pushing through double-digit price increases through the year, we expect a soft PC unit outlook next year also alongside more modest price hikes," Vogt and Spinola said.
The survey asked participants what brand of PC they are most likely to buy, and Apple (AAPL) remained the most preferred brand in the US, at 27%, despite declining about 100 basis points sequentially, the duo wrote.
Apple's competitors also faced sequential declines, with Dell (DELL) falling to 16% and HP (HPQ) to 4%, according to the survey results.
In China, preference for Apple rose about 300 basis points sequentially to 16%, while HP and Dell dropped about 2 and 5 percentage points, respectively, to 7% and 6%.
In late July, Apple reported MacBook sales growth of 29% annually in the fiscal third quarter, well above market expectations at the time.
Earlier this month, Dell reported a 20% year-over-year revenue increase for its client solutions group during the fiscal second quarter, missing Wall Street's expectations. That division includes PCs. HP's revenue from the personal systems business grew 18% during the fiscal third quarter, as announced last month.
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