Why Business Laptops and PCs Are About to Get a Lot More Expensive

If your company has a hardware refresh planned for later this year, the timing just got expensive. A global memory shortage — driven almost entirely by AI data center demand — is pushing DRAM and storage prices up faster than at any point in the past decade, and every major PC manufacturer has already warned that list prices are following. This isn't a distant forecast. It's already showing up in vendor quotes.

How bad the shortage actually is, in numbers

Research firm TrendForce reported that global DRAM contract prices rose an estimated 90–95% quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter of 2026, followed by a further 58–63% quarter-over-quarter increase in the second quarter, with 10–15% additional quarterly growth projected for the third quarter. Gartner separately projects memory prices will climb roughly 130% by the end of 2026 compared with 2025 levels, translating to an estimated 17% increase in PC prices and 13% in smartphone prices. IDC's more conservative modeling still puts 2026 DRAM and NAND supply growth at 16% and 17% respectively — well below the 20–30% growth that has historically been normal for the industry — while projecting the PC market could contract by 4.9% to 8.9% depending on how long the shortage persists, with average selling prices rising 4–8% as a result.

Every major PC manufacturer has responded with public guidance. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and ASUS have all warned of 15–20% PC price increases for 2026 tied directly to DRAM and NAND shortages, with some reports suggesting increases as high as 30% for certain configurations.

Why it's happening: the hardware isn't scarce, the priority is

The root cause isn't a manufacturing shortfall in the traditional sense — it's a reallocation. Over the course of 2025, major cloud providers signed enormous long-term contracts for high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, and the three manufacturers that control more than 95% of global DRAM production (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) responded by converting consumer-oriented production lines to data-center-grade output. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors the gap between memory demand and supply — across all DRAM, including high-bandwidth memory — is the widest the company has ever recorded, and that Micron had already locked in price and volume agreements covering its entire calendar-2026 HBM output before the year was halfway done. SK Hynix's chief executive has gone further, telling investors he expects 2027 to be the worst supply year in the memory industry's history.

The result is an unusual price inversion: older, legacy DDR4 memory has in some cases become more expensive per gigabit than cutting-edge HBM3e, the advanced memory used in AI accelerators — because manufacturers are prioritizing capacity for the higher-margin AI product regardless of which is technically newer.

When it might ease — and why "buy now" isn't just sales pressure

Multiple analysts and manufacturers point to the same rough timeline: no meaningful relief before 2027, when new production capacity currently being built is expected to finally begin catching up with demand. Industry memory maker TeamGroup has said prices will likely continue climbing through 2026 with no relief in sight until at least 2027. That means the pricing pressure described here isn't a short-term spike to wait out — it's the expected baseline for the rest of this year and into next.

What this means for your business right now

• Price out any planned hardware refresh now, even if the purchase itself is months away. Laptop and desktop inventory built earlier in 2026 still reflects older, cheaper memory contracts; new production runs increasingly do not. The gap between a quote today and a quote in Q4 2026 could be substantial.
• Expect fewer configuration options at the low end, not just higher prices. OEMs facing rising component costs are more likely to reduce base memory and storage specs to hold a price point than to absorb the cost increase — worth checking specs carefully rather than assuming a "similar" model this year matches last year's baseline.
• Reconsider extending current hardware lifecycles. With per-unit costs rising and near-term relief unlikely before 2027, extending refresh cycles on existing, still-functional hardware is a more defensible cost-management decision this year than it would typically be.
• Budget conversations should separate "AI software costs" from "AI-driven hardware costs." For context on how AI compute pricing is moving on the software and API side — a related but distinct budget line — see PrimeWorldMedia's coverage of recent AI model price cuts and what they mean for budgeting. The memory shortage described here is effectively the physical-hardware counterpart to that same AI infrastructure boom.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this shortage specific to gaming or high-end hardware, or does it affect standard business laptops too? It affects the broader market. While gaming and high-performance hardware are often covered most visibly, the underlying DRAM and NAND shortage affects standard business laptops, desktops, and servers equally, since they draw from the same constrained memory supply chain.

Will switching PC vendors help avoid the price increases? Unlikely to help meaningfully. The shortage is upstream, at the memory-manufacturer level (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron), not specific to any individual PC brand — Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and ASUS have all issued similar warnings, suggesting the pressure is industry-wide rather than vendor-specific.

Does this affect cloud/SaaS pricing too, or just physical hardware purchases? This article covers physical hardware costs specifically. Cloud infrastructure and AI software pricing are influenced by related but different dynamics — including the same underlying AI infrastructure boom — covered separately in PrimeWorldMedia's reporting on AI model pricing.

Is there any near-term fix, like buying refurbished or older-generation hardware? Refurbished and older-generation inventory built before the memory price increases can offer a genuine near-term hedge, since that stock reflects earlier, cheaper memory contracts. It's a reasonable option to evaluate for standard business use cases, though availability will tighten as existing inventory sells through.