Microsoft last week launched the next-generation Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, both with higher list prices. The new Surface Pro starts at US$1,599, up 60% from the previous generation, while the Surface Laptop is priced from $1,499, 50% higher.
Gaming console Nintendo Switch 2 bundled with the game Legends of Zelda is priced at $499, 11% higher than in May. Another gaming device, Sony’s PS5 Pro, has risen 20% to $900 in two months.
Many consumer electronics products, including PCs, laptops, and smartphones, have seen price increases from manufacturers since the start of the year.
A memory chip. Photo by Unsplash/Heliberto Arias |
For example, Samsung’s Galaxy A37 and A57 have gone up by several dozen U.S. dollars despite only minor upgrades from the previous generation. Motorola has also raised the price of its Razr 2026 lineup by more than $100.
Some companies are expected to raise product prices further as memory chip costs surge. Even Apple, a company known for its stable supply chain, is no exception.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal last week. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable,” he added.
The price adjustments stem from a global shortage of DRAM chips and NAND flash memory, components found in most mobile devices. The AI data center boom has prompted major manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix of South Korea, and Micron Technology of the U.S. shift production lines toward enterprise memory chips for AI servers, squeezing supply for consumer electronics.
Surging demand from artificial-intelligence companies for memory and storage chips has driven costs so high that Apple may need to raise device prices significantly to preserve its profit margins.
Passing those higher costs on to consumers while maintaining current margins would add about $270 to the price of the next iPhone Pro model, according to estimates from research firm TechInsights.
Analysts predict the next generation of iPhones could become more expensive. The iPhone 17 Pro currently starts at $1,099, giving Apple a gross margin of 47%. To maintain that margin on the next model, Apple would have to sell the iPhone 18 Pro at $1,371. Since the company typically rounds its retail prices, US$1,299 is seen as a more plausible figure.
In May, “Jukan05”, an analyst and prominent “leaker,” posted a chart offering a visual picture of declining supply and the memory market’s seemingly unchecked price surge. The shortage has become so severe that the DRAM market is now using an hourly pricing model.
In Samsung’s first-quarter 2026 earnings report released on April 30, Kim Jaejune, head of the company’s memory chip business, warned that the memory crisis would not end in 2027, according to PC parts marketplace and tech news platform Tom’s Hardware.
The gap between supply and demand next year could even widen further compared with 2026. Similarly, SK Hynix Chairman Chey Tae Won said AI-related memory demand pressures would likely persist through 2030.
In March, Harry Yoon, Samsung vice president for memory marketing and product planning, told the media that the shortage is shifting from high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, used in data centers to NAND memory, which is better suited to AI inference models.
“In previous years, HBM was the dominant technology. However, many companies are shifting production capacity to NAND, showing that this is a relatively new trend,” Yoon said.
Manufacturers are now rushing to add new production lines. However, these facilities cannot be built overnight. According to tech news platform TechRadara fabrication plant costs billions of U.S. dollars to build and typically takes about two to three years to complete, meaning shortages and high prices will persist for at least the next few years.
Memory chip makers also appear to be in no rush, as most products are still selling well even at sharply higher prices. Circular Technology, a Massachusetts-based data center hardware retailer, said that contract prices in 2025 for some Micron memory chips used in data centers rose from $350 to $1,300.
“These companies are trading at high valuations, and because they have to keep their margins high, the consumer is the one who loses,” said Brad Gastwirth, Circular’s head of global research, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal. “The laptops coming at the end of the year are not going to be cheap.”
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