More from RAM price hikes: the latest on the global memory shortage
IDC, Omdia, and Gartner agree: the PC market will shrink because of RAMaggedon. Respectively, they’re forecasting 11 percent, 12 percent, and 10 percent declines in 2026, far bigger than previously predicted.
“The sub-$500 entry-level PC segment will disappear by 2028,” Gartner said in late February. Phones will drop similarly. And these forecasts don’t include the impacts of Trump’s war on Iran.
CEO Bruce Broussard said during its Q1 2026 earnings call that RAM now makes up 35 percent of its cost of materials. That’s up from 15-18 percent just three months earlier. It’s not announcing price hikes yet, but we’d be surprised if they weren’t coming. RAMageddon is nigh.
[The Register]
Prices could increase (or profits thinned) once Apple’s current stock of components like DRAM, NAND, and advanced chips runs out, according to The Wall Street Journal:
Artificial-intelligence companies are writing huge checks for chips, memory, specialized glass fiber and more, and they have begun to outduel Apple in the race to secure components. Suppliers accustomed to catering to Apple’s every whim are gaining the leverage to demand that the iPhone maker pay more.
That’s according to Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who, in a big post on X, also said that:
Memory is fast becoming one of the most expensive smartphone components and potentially the single largest cost driver in the bill of materials by year-end, with estimates suggesting that memory modules which cost less than $20 a year ago could exceed $100 by year-end for top-tier models.
During an interview with Wccftech, Micron VP of marketing Christopher Moore says the company is still serving consumers “through different channels,” such as focusing on supplying DRAM modules to device manufacturers like Dell and Asus:
Our viewpoint is that we are trying to help consumers around the world. We’re just doing it through different channels. We still have a very sizable business in the client and mobile markets... I think it’s really important for people to understand we are still servicing the consumer market.
As Framework announces its second price hike tied to rising RAM costs, it’s worth taking a moment to give Apple its dues — it was hiking up memory prices long before it was cool.
Akarain8:
If this carries on Apple’s RAM pricing will start to look merely ‘overpriced’.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
It’s no secret that RAM prices are absolutely Out. Of. Control. Paradox Customs is taking an interesting approach, selling “prebuilt” PCs that skip memory entirely. The idea being, if you happen to have spare sticks lying around, you can save some money. Of course, it’s also an alarming sign of what the PC market has come to.
As spotted by VideoCardz, data from the German outlet ComputerBase shows RAM kit prices spiking by an average of 252 percent from September to December. Meanwhile, the data suggests that the average price of SSDs — which is also affected by the RAM crunch — rose by almost 42 percent during the three months.