Market research firm TrendForce projects that memory prices will “rise sharply again” in the first quarter of 2026.
As a result, smartphone and laptop brands will resort to products with higher prices but reduced specs.
Almost every brand will be affected, even Apple. Despite its strong profitability, Apple may “reevaluate pricing strategies for new models and consider reducing or removing price cuts on older versions” because of how much the memory component will take a significantly larger piece of the pie on an iPhone’s total BOM.
As for low-end and midrange phones — where RAM is an important marketing differentiator and is a big part of the BOM — brands may be left with no choice but to increase prices in 2026. They may also have to modify the lifecycle of existing models to minimize loss.
TrendForce also projects that memory shortage will force laptop brands to adjust their product offerings, procurement strategies, and regional sales styles.
That means that higher-end models will become much more expensive, and we might start seeing laptops with only 8GB of RAM to become the norm again.