Gartner, the analyst firm that once predicted Windows Phone would take over the iPhone by 2015 and said that the personal computer would wither the same year (because of tablets), now wants us to believe that the sub-$500 PC will disappear by 2028.
I bet some serious NFT* money that this won’t materialize as this price bracket accounts for about a third of the total addressable market. (*oh wait, that was another Gartner prediction that didn’t happen).
Smartphones
You see, smartphones share a lot with an average PC (e.g. LPDDR memory and eMMC storage) with a raft of extra components: cameras, microphone, speaker, modem, accelerometer, battery, screen and so on. Yet, the entry-level smartphone usually costs far less than a similar-specced PC.
For example, the Motorola Moto G Power 5G 2024, retails for $130 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage while a mini PC from UDPTCP fetches $150. And yet no one is talking about sub-$500 smartphones going extinct by 2028, that simply won’t happen.
While it is true that the share of white box PC manufacturers – brands outside of the big six PC vendors – is rapidly dwindling (hitting 13.9% in 2025), the remaining players, including some of the best mini PC brands around, have adapted and thrived, like mammals in the age of dinosaurs.
Opportunity for China
Which brings us to another variable: China. The current RAM/NAND crisis is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to Chinese memory manufacturers to swoop in at the lower end of the market, filling the gaps that traditional players (Micron, SanDisk, Samsung) used to fill.
We’ve seen that before: UNISOC, Amlogic, Rockchip, Allwinner (China) and MediaTek, (Taiwanese) did just that when Samsung and Qualcomm moved upstream, leaving the basic system-on-chip market clear for “just-good-enough” products.
For memory, expect YMTC and CXMT – China’s answer to SK-Hynix/Samsung or SanDisk/Micron – to ramp production as fast as they can gleefully. Sure, they won’t have the latest technology, but as for system-on-chips, they will be good enough.
Already, there are reports Apple and others will use products from the aforementioned Chinese companies and I predict that Chinese NAND and memory chips will become common in computers and laptops produced in mainland China.
Don’t forget the OS
The third variable I’d like to throw into the conversation is the influence of Google and Microsoft. Apple’s current generation (iPhone 16) tops at 8GB RAM, showing how far its rivals have to go when it comes to memory management within the operating system.
And absolutely no one complains about how sluggish the iPhone 16 is, even with AI features enabled.
If manufacturers are reluctant to release products with more than 8GB of RAM, then expect Microsoft and Google to prioritize improving memory management efficiency in 2026, perhaps, in the case of the Redmond-based company, as early as the next update.
The past two years have been marred by criticism against Microsoft’s propensity to add what many consider as “bloatware” features to its mainstream Windows 11.
My colleagues on TechRadar have expressed their frustration many a time in the past, yearning for a debloated, simpler, streamlined version of Windows 11.
The current RAM-ggedon may make accelerate this.
(as a sidenote, Ranjit Atwal went on record to say that there will not be a Windows 11 and that instead Windows 10 would be upgraded forever)
The need for speed
Entry level computers will become more powerful thanks to Moore’s Law and the emergence of new incumbents like Nvidia, MediaTek and Qualcomm. This will not change even if improvements slow down.
Necessity is the mother of all inventions, the saying goes and I foresee the use of forgotten features like RAM compression as used by computers in the 1990s (and in Windows 10 as Compression Store).
Could hardware-based memory compression go mainstream? Both Intel (QAT, IAA) and AMD (RDNA4) have proven mature technologies that they utilized across a breadth of products.
Even if it is not dedicated on-chip silicon, having something/anything to take care of this at the lower end of the market could bring some tangible performance benefits.
In conclusion
No, I don’t think new personal computers costing less than $500 will disappear by December, 31st, 2028. I firmly believe this, like so many others, will be yet another failed Gartner prediction.
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