Overview
- Retailers say manufacturers are passing on higher memory costs so prices for PCs, smartphones and SSDs are rising for shoppers this holiday season.
- Market researcher NIQ reports broad price jumps with average GPU prices nearly double year‑on‑year and desktop PC prices about 41 percent higher.
- Chipmakers have redirected scarce wafer capacity to high‑margin server memory such as High Bandwidth Memory, reducing supply of standard DRAM and NAND for consumer devices.
- Analysts warn supply relief will be slow because building and qualifying new fabs takes many months to years and major firms have pre‑committed much production through 2028.
- The situation follows a classic industry ‘pig cycle’: after pandemic-era cuts to stop losses, capacity could not restart fast enough to meet a sudden AI-driven demand surge, squeezing consumers and retailers.