PC shipments could plummet over 20% in the second half of the year! Acer Chairman Jason Chen: CPU shortages are the culprit.

Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen issued a warning during an earnings call, stating that due to the inventory buildup in the first half of the year and significant increases in average selling prices, PC shipments in the second half are expected to decline by more than 20%.

IDC projects the overall PC market will contract by over 11% in 2026, with average selling prices already up 20% to 30% in the first half. The consensus across the industry is that the decline will deepen in the second half.

Chen pointed out that CPU shortages are the biggest factor driving the shipment decline in the second half. CPU supply has become the primary bottleneck in the supply chain. Previously, supply pressure was concentrated on memory, but it has now shifted to CPUs, which has become the core factor determining whether complete systems can ship smoothly.

The CPU shortage stems from two factors: on one hand, advanced capacity at wafer foundries is being prioritized for GPUs and AI server chips, significantly compressing consumer-grade CPU production. On the other hand, the rapid adoption of AI inference and agent applications has made CPUs critical for data processing and task orchestration, driving a surge in demand. This dual squeeze has directly reduced CPU supply for the PC segment.

Beyond CPUs, prices for key components such as memory and solid-state drives, which had been rising steadily, are now showing signs of stabilizing. PC price increases are also slowing accordingly, making the shipment decline trend difficult to reverse.

Acer stated that in response to the current situation, the company will maintain stable average selling prices for its PC products, and overall revenue is still expected to hold at a certain level.

Institutions estimate that with reduced shipments and moderating price increases, Acer's PC business will remain flat compared to the first half, with growth primarily driven by diversified businesses such as non-PC products and monitors.

Although Acer itself has diversified business support, the AI PC products that the entire PC industry has high hopes for will also struggle to reverse the overall market decline in the short term.

Chen stated that in the second half, new AI PC products developed by Google in partnership with Qualcomm and NVIDIA's RTX Spark architecture will contribute only marginally to industry revenue scale and total shipment volume.