A laptop that sold for about ₱50,000 in the Philippines last year now costs more than ₱80,000 — a jump of roughly 60% — and Lenovo's country chief says prices will not come down before December at the earliest. If you are waiting for a sale, the two parties who watch this market most closely, Lenovo and research firm IDC, both say the wait could be long.
Michael Ngan, country general manager of Lenovo Philippines, laid out the numbers to reporters on the sidelines of the Lenovo Leaders Circle Gold Invitational in Dasmariñas, Cavite, in remarks first reported by Newsbytes.PH. As of publication, only Newsbytes.PH has carried Ngan's comments, though the price trend behind them is documented by independent data — more on that below.
Where the laptop price increases come from
Ngan pointed at the AI boom. Chipmakers are prioritizing higher-margin, AI-capable processors over entry-level parts, and Intel's reported supply constraints are tightening the squeeze. Server prices have climbed as much as 300% in the past 12 months, he said. The cheapest tier of the market is also disappearing outright: Intel's older Celeron and Pentium families are being phased out, and Ngan raised the possibility that lower-end Core chips could follow.
He was direct about who gets hurt: "You're right, there's a digital divide because of the affordability," he said, referring to buyers who can no longer afford machines that used to fit their budget. Demand, he added, is being deferred rather than destroyed: "There will just be a delay in the purchase." Corporate buyers are responding the same way — some asking for bigger budgets, others postponing refresh cycles or keeping old monitors and peripherals in service.
IDC's data points the same direction
IDC's October 8 release says worldwide PC shipments fell 20.1% year on year in the third quarter of 2026, to 62.7 million units — the second straight quarterly decline. IDC blames an inventory "pull-in" (vendors and channels stocking up early in the year ahead of price hikes), ongoing supply constraints, and higher prices tied to the AI data-center build-out. "Prices will remain elevated," IDC research director Jitesh Ubrani said, and the release warns that a weaker economy "could push demand lower and darken the outlook for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027."
| Vendor | Q3 2026 shipments | Change vs Q3 2025 |
|---|
| Lenovo | 14.9 million | −22.6% |
| HP | 10.3 million | −30.9% |
| Dell | 7.6 million | −25.0% |
| Apple | 5.9 million | −11.3% |
| ASUS | 5.5 million | −8.6% |
Lenovo held the top spot with a 23.8% share even as its shipments fell, per the same IDC data. We covered the global numbers in our report on IDC's Q3 tracker, and the sharpest single pressure is memory: Samsung has locked in 30–40% memory price hikes for 2027, which flows straight into what a finished laptop costs to build.
Buy now or wait?
What the new price floor looks like is already on Philippine shelves — the ASUS Zenbook 14 (UX3480), a mainstream OLED ultrabook, launched here from ₱76,995. Going by what Lenovo and IDC actually said, the decision tree looks like this:
- If your current machine works, waiting is a gamble, not a plan. Lenovo expects no relief before December, IDC does not expect pricing "anywhere near what it was a year ago," and both call the outlook for next year uncertain.
- If you must buy now — a failing unit, or software that has dropped support for an old operating system — Ngan's timeline says prices hold at this level at least through November, so waiting a few more weeks is unlikely to earn you a discount.
- Entry-level buyers lose the most options. With Celeron- and Pentium-class chips on the way out, the cheapest bracket of brand-new laptops is thinning, and nothing in either company's statements points to cheaper models filling the gap.
Ngan said Lenovo's revenue is rising even as unit sales come under pressure, with pandemic-era laptops now ageing into a replacement wave — meaning demand is stacking up behind prices that refuse to fall. For Filipino buyers, the takeaway is blunt: December is the earliest date anyone credible has put on relief, and no one has promised it even then.
