Windows 11 Upgrades Stall as Chipflation and RAM Prices Push Relief to 2028

Microsoft's Windows revenue from PC makers fell 27% in its latest quarter, and the PC upgrade cycle behind the Windows 11 migration has effectively stalled, analysts said. Relief for enterprise buyers may not arrive until 2028 or even 2029.

The cause is a double price shock analysts have nicknamed "chipflation" and "RAMageddon" (also "RAMpocalypse") — elevated CPU and memory costs that keep PC prices high. Mainstream Windows 10 support ended a year ago, triggering a rush of replacements, but that momentum has since collapsed.

The takeaway: enterprises still on Windows 10 are now caught between a security deadline that has already passed and hardware prices that refuse to fall.

What happened to the Windows 11 migration wave?

Windows 11's share of Windows PCs jumped from roughly half in October 2025 to 72.57% in February 2026, immediately after Windows 10 support ended. It then slipped to 71.5% by September, according to StatCounter.

Windows 10, meanwhile, is not fading away. It ran on 27.7% of Windows PCs in September — slightly up from 26.45% in February. A dead operating system is quietly regaining users.

That stall coincided with a broader PC market crash driven by high RAM prices, tariff uncertainty, and the Iran war.

What are the numbers behind the slowdown?

The shipment data traces the shape of the collapse:

• Q1 2026: shipments up 3.2%, as buyers front-ran memory-driven price increases (Counterpoint Research)
• Q2 2026: shipments down 4% — the first decline since Q1 2025
• Q3 2026: shipments down 21%
• Q4 2026 forecast: down 27% year over year

Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, said commercial PC replacements and Windows migrations provided some stability but were "insufficient to offset the broader market contraction."

"All these trends are deflating the demand slowing down the replacement cycle," Shah said.

Buyers are being prudent about what to buy and when, waiting for better deals that will not come soon, Shah said.

In plain terms: the enterprise refresh that should have carried the market through 2026 is being postponed, quarter by quarter.

When do prices normalize?

Analysts split on timing but agreed on one point: not in 2027.

Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, pointed to Intel's recent CPU price increases as a direct driver of higher base PC costs. "When prices are higher, demand goes down. It causes a deferred upgrade cycle," McCarron said.

Memory prices will stay inflated as long as most DRAM supply is directed to data centers feeding the AI boom, McCarron said — a squeeze Micron expects to persist through 2028.

Intel, on its recent earnings call, signaled its PC chip business will remain soft through the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Its lowest-cost PC chip, Wildcat Lake, is sold out — leaving budget configurations scarce.

Steven Dickens, principal analyst at Hyperframe Research, gave the longest estimate: supply constraints for memory and PC parts may last through 2029.

"PC vendors are combating this through restricted configurations and bundles," Dickens said.

Is AI driving any upgrade demand?

Not yet, according to Dickens. Upgrades are mostly following a typical cycle. But high-end machines capable of running large language models on-device are starting to bend the market.

"We are seeing power user devices for local LLM deployment becoming a material part of the mix and changing the unit price average as a result," Dickens said.

For enterprises, that creates a conundrum Shah highlighted: companies in a Windows 10 end-of-support replacement cycle must decide whether to pay premium prices for AI PCs now or wait.

What breaks the logjam?

Eventually, enterprises will have to upgrade regardless of price, McCarron said — and the longer the deferral, the sharper the rebound.

"It'll result in a larger PC upgrade cycle down the road," McCarron said. "It's like compressing a spring. The longer you hold it down, the harder it snaps back."

If the soft market drags on, he added, "it will turn into a larger boom perhaps a year later."

For CIOs, the practical reading is stark: budget for elevated PC prices through at least 2028, because the deferred Windows 11 fleet will not stay deferred forever.