A “wave of forward purchasing by the channel” has helped sustain double-digit PC growth into 2026.
That’s according to market watcher CONTEXT, whose data indicates that notebook and desktop revenues in European distribution rose by 10% and 18% in the first ten weeks of the year, respectively.
This increase was fuelled not only by “sustained refresh demand”, but also pull forward from the channel amid worsening memory shortages, CONTEXT Senior Analyst Marie-Christine Pygott said.
“Market performance remains strong on the surface, but it is being fuelled by pull-forward demand rather than long-term stability,” she stated.
“Partners are actively buying ahead to secure 2025 price structures, knowing that this window is closing fast.”
The UK’s largest reseller, Softcat, last week topped expectations for its fiscal first-half, partly thanks to “pull forward of some customer orders due to memory shortages”.
On the other hand, mainland Europe’s largest reseller, Bechtle, saw its shares fall to a seven-year low on Friday as CEO Thomas Olemotz acknowledged the “storage crisis” will have both positive and negative impacts on its business.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Rob Quickenden, CTO of Microsoft and Cisco partner Cisilion, said he expected his company to receive more requests from customers to “hold and store” kit such as switches, access points and laptops.
“I’m expecting them to say, ‘can we order it now, but can you keep it for us in your warehouse and then ship it to us at a different time?’,” he said.
“But then of course we have to buy the kit but can’t recognise the revenue until we ship it. For a smaller company like us, that’s not simple, so we’re looking at how we can do that. For our strategic clients, the answer is always, ‘yes’, and we’ll work out how we do it later.”
On Bechtle’s full-year earnings call on Friday, Olemotz claimed smaller system integrators will be more adversely impacted by the current shortages than market giants like Bechtle.
“We currently expect that in the business year 2026, the larger market players will be better able to manage current challenges,” he said on the call, a transcript of which can be read here.
That message was echoed by Softcat CEO Graham Charlton, who predicted the LSE-listed giant could benefit from the shortages.
“We’re the biggest player in the UK, so we’re going to get priority from the disties and the vendors. We can get good outcomes for our customers however it plays out, and that will give us an advantage,” he told IT Channel Oxygen last week.
The European PC market will remain “relatively robust” through the first half of 2026, partly because distribution inventory is currently insulating the market from the full impact of memory inflation, CONTEXT said.
The outlook will become more constrained as channel inventory depletes and supply tightens, CONTEXT warned, however.
“Businesses need to prepare for a very different market dynamic in the second half,” Pygott said.
“What we are seeing now is not a slowdown, but a shift. The real test will come when supply tightens and pricing fully catches up with the reality of the component market.”
