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Title: Memory Price Hikes Will Kill Off Budget PCs and Smartphones, Analyst
Warns
Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/02/27/...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ballooning memory
prices are forecast to kill off entry-level PCs, leading to a decline in
global shipments this year -- and a similar effect is going to hit
smartphones. Analyst biz Gartner is projecting a drop in PC shipments of more
than 10 percent during 2026, and a decline of around 8 percent for
smartphones, all due to the AI-driven memory shortage. Some types of memory
have doubled or quadrupled in price since last year, and Gartner believes
DRAM and NAND flash used in PCs and phones is set for a further 130 percent
rise by the end of 2026. The upshot of this is that the budget PC will
disappear, simply because vendors won't be able to build them at a price that
will satisfy cost-conscious buyers, according to Gartner research director
Ranjit Atwal. "Because the price of memory is increasing so much, vendors
lose the ability to provide entry-level PCs -- those below about $500," he
told The Register. PC makers could just raise the price of their cheap and
cheerful boxes to above that level to compensate for the memory hike,
however, price-sensitive buyers simply won't bite, he added. Another factor
expected to add to declining fortunes of the PC industry this year is AI
devices -- systems equipped with special hardware for accelerating AI tasks,
typically via a neural processing unit (NPU) embedded in the CPU. These
systems were predicted to take the market by storm, but they require more
memory to support AI processing and vendors like to mark them up to a premium
price. "Historically, downgrading specifications was the way to go when
prices were being squeezed, but that's difficult here," Atwal said. "The
thinking was that the average price [of AI PCs] would fall this year, and
lead to more adoption," said Atwal, "but that's not happening." The lack of
killer applications isn't helping either.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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