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Counterpoint Research reports China's overall smartphone shipments fell 10% year-over-year in Q3 2026, marking a 14-year low. Apple's share rose 4.8 percentage points to 19.5%, moving it from sixth to second place behind Huawei, which gained 5.3 points to lead with 21.3%. Vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi, and HONOR all lost share during the quarter.
Western Digital measured that an 8-second AI-generated video clip delivered to users as a 3.97MB file actually produces over 500MB of backend data, including logs, cached context, renders, backups, and safety records. A WD-sponsored IDC survey of 763 IT decision-makers found nearly 95% reported generative AI increasing their data volumes over the past year, with about 61% seeing growth of 25% or more.
IDC reports smartphone shipments dropped 22% in the September quarter, the steepest decline the research firm has tracked, as manufacturers raised prices and cut cheaper models. IDC attributes the surge to memory chip prices rising roughly 350% over the past year amid heavy demand from AI companies.
IDC's preliminary Q3 2026 data shows global smartphone shipments fell 22% year-over-year, driven largely by a memory chip shortage that has pushed component costs up roughly 350% since last year. Samsung led with 57.8 million units shipped (22.6% share), just ahead of Apple's 57.3 million, as Apple's iPhone shipments fell only 4%—the smallest decline among top vendors—narrowing the gap to 500,000 units and 0.2 percentage points.
IDC reports China's overall smartphone shipments fell 15.4% year-over-year in Q3 2026, with Apple's iPhone shipments down 4.3% but its market share rising to 17.8% from 15.8% a year earlier. Huawei posted the strongest results, growing shipments 17.3% year-over-year to capture 21.1% share, while Wiko's shipments collapsed 74%.
IDC and Omdia both reported steep year-over-year declines in global PC shipments for Q3 2026. IDC recorded a 20.1 percent drop to 62.7 million units, down from 78.5 million a year earlier and 9.1 percent below Q2 2026's 68.2 million units. Omdia reported an even steeper 21.2 percent decline to 58.1 million devices, with desktop shipments down 23.5 percent and laptops down 20.6 percent.
IDC Global data shows worldwide PC shipments dropped 20.1% year-over-year in Q3 2026, a loss of 15.8 million units, and fell 9.1% from the prior quarter. The firm attributes this to a severe memory chip shortage driven by manufacturers shifting production toward AI data center components like HBM, which has pushed DDR5 memory prices up by as much as 500%.
IDC reported worldwide PC shipments of 62.7 million units in Q3 2026, down 9.1 percent from the previous quarter and 20.1 percent compared to Q3 2025. The firm attributed the decline to ongoing supply issues and elevated prices, following a similar downturn reported in July 2026.
IDC reports Apple shipped 5.9 million Macs in Q3 2026, down 11.3% year over year, while the global PC market dropped 20.1% to 62.7 million units. The steeper industry-wide decline pushed Apple's market share up from 8.5% to 9.5%, keeping it in fourth place behind Lenovo, HP and Dell.
IDC Frontier, a SoftBank Group subsidiary, reported that its IDCF Cloud service suffered a ransomware attack beginning October 7 at 3:40 AM local time, disrupting its East Japan Region 1 data center cluster. The company said 495 businesses and local government bodies using the cloud platform were affected, and it has disabled management console access across all regions while checking security.
Stanford's 2026 AI Index finds 88% of companies have adopted AI in some part of their business, while a PwC CEO survey found 56% of CEOs reported neither revenue growth nor cost reduction from AI, with only 12% seeing both. IDC projects enterprises will spend $409 billion on AI platforms, applications, and services this year.
Reports indicate that sales of Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 have increased following Apple's announcement of the iPhone Duo, its rumored foldable device. Samsung has responded by lowering prices on some of its foldable phones in certain markets. Foldables remain a small slice of the overall smartphone market, with IDC estimating 20.6 million foldable shipments last year against 1.25 billion total smartphone shipments.