With the rapid expansion of demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and the continuous rise in storage chip prices, the global consumer electronics industry chain is undergoing a round of cost restructuring. Recently, Apple implemented a global price increase for MacBook, iPad, and multiple hardware products, with an overall increase of about 20%. This is the company's largest global price adjustment in recent years, due to a significant increase in the cost of memory and storage chips. Microsoft subsequently announced that due to the continuous increase in key component costs, consumers will have to pay higher prices when purchasing Xbox game consoles in the future.
The main reason for this round of price increases is that the supply crisis of storage chips has continued to worsen since the second half of 2025, affecting more consumer products. At present, high bandwidth memory (HBM) has become a standard configuration for high-end AI chips. Big model training and large-scale implementation of AI servers have made HBM a must-have for high-end computing devices. Compared to ordinary storage used in mobile phones and personal computers, HBM has a higher profit margin and sufficient long-term orders from manufacturers. Therefore, major global storage chip companies such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, etc. have adjusted their production line allocation and shifted a large amount of advanced wafer production capacity to AI supported storage. This directly compresses the supply of consumer grade dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and flash memory (NAND), leading to a sustained tight supply of related products and an increase in prices. According to CFM's estimation of the Chinese flash memory market, the global spot prices of DRAM and NAND will increase by 386% and 207% respectively for the whole year of 2025.
For a long time, the consumer electronics industry has relied on the annual price reduction of components to dilute research and development and channel costs, forming an industry consensus of "performance upgrades and stable prices". But now, the proportion of storage chips in the overall cost has skyrocketed, forcing manufacturers to make a choice: either reduce memory and flash configuration compression costs, or directly raise terminal prices. Industry insiders point out that the increase in storage prices is not a problem for a single company, but rather an industry-specific change after the expansion of AI infrastructure is transmitted to the terminal hardware industry chain. A 'chip inflation' is spreading to ordinary consumers. Compared to price increases, the challenges brought by shortages are even more severe. According to estimates by relevant institutions, by 2027, global personal computer (PC) manufacturers may face a 15% storage chip gap, equivalent to 58 million PC production, and the gap ratio for smartphone manufacturers will also reach 12%, equivalent to 134 million mobile phone production.
Faced with the tight supply situation in the industry, companies such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, etc. are competing to expand their storage chip production capacity and consolidate their market competitiveness. However, the construction period of semiconductor factories is as long as two to three years, and the imbalance between supply and demand is difficult to solve in the short term. At the same time, global cloud vendors and AI companies continue to lock in long-term HBM supply, further seizing the general storage resources in the spot market. The supply shortage in the consumer electronics field will continue for a long period of time, and high terminal prices may become a temporary norm.
At present, the AI wave driving industrial upgrading is the trend, but technological development cannot come at the cost of squeezing the mass consumer industry. We should improve diversified supply and optimize capacity allocation, so that computing power innovation and the consumer electronics industry can achieve coordinated progress and smoothly exit this round of cost restructuring.