RAM price hikes: the latest on the global memory shortage

Memory suppliers just blew a hole in the PC gaming industry – and they’re about to do the same to everything else. For weeks, PC enthusiasts have borne the brunt of skyrocketing memory prices, but the shockwaves will soon impact a wider range of products as suppliers pour resources into a far bigger and more lucrative endeavor: AI.

The biggest names in the AI industry are buying up DRAM memory for their sprawling data centers, and memory makers are prioritizing their demands over everyone else’s. DRAM is embedded “in every part of our digital society today,” Jeff Janukowicz, research VP at IDC, tells The Verge. That’s everything from laptops to smartphones, gaming consoles, smart TVs, cars, and even small amounts in solid-state drives (SSDs). “There’s a lot at stake,” he says.

For the fourth month in a row, Framework is increasing prices on RAM and storage for its modular PCs due to ongoing shortages from suppliers. An update to Framework’s blog on Tuesday states that DDR5 RAM will now cost $13 to $18 per GB, up from February’s rate of $12 to $16 per GB. This is partly due to the company selling out of older, less expensive inventory, which has also pushed Framework to “re-price some capacities” of storage, as well.

Additionally, the Framework Desktop is getting another price increase due to RAM and storage costs. The base configuration of the Desktop now costs $1,269, up from $1,139 in January. Some pre-built configurations of the Framework Laptop 16 are also getting more expensive, and in “upcoming months,” Framework is planning to make similar pricing changes on its other pre-built models.

We’ve been talking to phone companies both big and small this week at MWC, and they’ve basically all agreed on one point: the RAM crisis is hitting hard, and phone prices will almost certainly increase where they haven’t already.

For a major global brand like Xiaomi, volume is one lever the company can pull. To balance out the increased costs, Angus Ng, Xiaomi’s director of communications and public relations, tells us, “We can potentially go for bigger volumes, especially in the mid-range segment and entry-level segment, so then we can try to lower costs in that area.“ Pulling other levers, like scaling back flagship specs, isn’t considered an option. Says Ng, “…we have to chase the latest and intend to showcase our best.” The Xiaomi 17 and 17 Ultra launching this week in Europe match last year’s pricing, but it sounds like that trend might not hold in the long term.

The smartphone industry could experience a record-breaking decline in 2026 as a result of the RAM shortage stemming from memory-hungry AI giants. That’s according to the latest report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), which forecasts smartphone shipments to plummet 12.9 percent this year, marking its “lowest annual shipment volume in more than a decade.”

At the same time, the average selling price for smartphones is set to hit new highs, with IDC predicting a 14 percent increase to a record $523. “While memory prices are projected to stabilize by mid-2027, they are unlikely to return to previous level,” IDC senior researcher Nabila Popal says, adding that the sub-$100 phone segment will become “permanently uneconomical.” Next week, Apple is rumored to announce a new edition of its budget smartphone as the “iPhone 17e,” which could give a hint about where things are going.

Maybe you’ve heard: Memory is expensive now. The price of RAM has tripled, quadrupled, even sextupled depending on the type of chip, all because AI companies are gobbling it up.

But maybe you’ve thought: I don’t buy memory sticks! I don’t build my own PCs! It won’t affect me, right?

Phison is one of the leading makers of controller chips for SSDs and other flash memory devices — and CEO Pua Khein-Seng has now become a leading voice for just how bad the RAM shortage might get.

Companies may need to cut back their product lines in the second half of 2026, and some companies will even die if they can’t get the components they need, he agreed, in a televised interview with Ningguan Chen of Taiwanese broadcaster Next TV.

Valve has updated the Steam Deck website to say that the Steam Deck OLED may be out of stock “intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.” The PC gaming handheld has been out of stock in the US and other parts of the world for a few days, and thanks to this update, we now know why.

The update comes shortly after Valve delayed the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller from a planned shipping window of early 2026 because of the memory and storage crunch. “We have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change,” Valve said in a post about that announcement from earlier this month.

Sony and Nintendo are reportedly feeling squeezed by RAM shortages as demand from AI data centers takes up an increasing share of memory chip production. In response to rising costs and dwindling chip supplies, Sony is considering pushing back the release of its next PlayStation console “to 2028 or even 2029,” according to industry sources cited by Bloomberg, while Nintendo may increase the $450 price of its Switch 2 console this year.

That delay would be a considerable divergence from Sony’s usual release schedule, having launched a new console generation every six to seven years since the original PlayStation debuted in 1994. As the current PlayStation 5 console was released in November 2020, it would have been expected to launch before the end of 2027.

The Super refresh to Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs was expected at CES 2026 in January, but it didn’t make an appearance. The Information reports that in December, Nvidia managers decided not to release the new cards as scheduled, choosing to prioritize AI chips instead due to the limited supply of RAM currently available. On top of that, “Nvidia is also slashing production of its current line of gaming chips,” the RTX 50-series, which are already in high demand and consistently sold out at retailers.

The priority shift away from gaming GPUs follows record-breaking revenue for Nvidia, driven by its AI chips. Data center revenue made up $51.2 billion out of the total $57 billion Nvidia reported in its Q3 2026 earnings. While gaming revenue was also up 30 percent during that same period, it makes up a much smaller slice of the pie than it used to.

Following an initial price increase announced two months ago, Raspberry Pi is raising prices again for several of its single-board computers. “The cost of some parts has more than doubled over the last quarter,” Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said in an announcement today. “As a result, we now need to make further increases to our own pricing, affecting all Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, and Compute Module 4 and 5, products that have 2GB or more of memory.”

In December, the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 saw price increases from $5 to $25, depending on the amount of RAM included, while the 16GB version of the Compute Module 5 jumped by $20. Starting soon, prices will increase again by $10 for those same devices with 2GB of memory, by $15 for 4GB models, by $30 for 8GB variants, and by $60 for configurations with 16GB of RAM.

Apple will try to avoid raising iPhone 18 prices “as much as possible” in the face of a global memory shortage, according to a report from supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. According to Kuo, Apple plans to “absorb the costs” of rising RAM prices, while at least keeping the iPhone 18’s starting price steady.

Kuo reports that Apple is now negotiating iPhone memory prices with suppliers every quarter, instead of every six months, and that he expects the company to face another price increase during its next round of discussions. The company plans to make up for the rising costs with its services business, which includes subscriptions to apps like Apple Music, iCloud, Apple TV, and others.

The GPU market is turning into a mess again. Asus told Hardware Unboxed earlier this week that it was winding down production of its RTX 5070 Ti, but the PC maker is now walking back that claim and blaming “incomplete information” from its own Asus PR representatives.

“The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB have not been discontinued or designated as end-of-life (EOL),” says an Asus statement. “Asus has no plans to stop selling these models.”

Just weeks after raising the price of its RAM modules, Framework has announced that it’s also increasing the price of its desktop PC in response to the global memory shortage. The Framework Desktop with 32GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 chip now starts at $1,139, instead of $1,099.

“We held off on it for as long as we could, but we had to update our Framework Desktop pricing today to account for the massive increase in LPDDR5x pricing from our suppliers,” Framework says in a post on X. “As before, we’re only adjusting prices enough to cover the increases in cost.”

The modular PC company Framework is adjusting the price of its DDR5 RAM modules once again as the cost of memory continues to surge. In an update on Wednesday, Framework said it will charge $10 per GB for 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB, with “slightly higher” prices for the 48GB and up.

Framework first announced a price hike on memory earlier this month, citing “substantially higher costs” from suppliers and distributors. With this most recent increase in place, the 8GB variation jumped from $60 to $80, the 16GB option increased from $120 to $160, and the 32GB variation went from $240 to $320. Meanwhile, the price tag of the 48GB option more than doubled from $240 as of June 2025 to $620. The 64GB (2 x 32GB) and 96GB (2 x 48GB) modules are also more expensive, priced at $640 and $1,240, respectively.

Your next smartphone or PC might cost more amid a global memory shortage that the International Data Corporation expects to “persist well into 2027.” A new report from the research firm lays out the potential impact of the RAM crunch, saying it “signals the end of an era of cheap, abundant memory and storage” — for now, at least.

The price of RAM has skyrocketed over the past few months as the world’s biggest memory makers — Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix — allocate more resources for AI companies, which are buying up tons of memory for their massive data centers. Though PC gamers looking to upgrade their build’s RAM may have been the first to feel the impact of this crunch, it’s coming for other devices, too.

Micron, one of the three biggest memory suppliers in the world, forecasts rough months ahead for the global RAM supply. As part of its earnings report released on Wednesday, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said “tight industry conditions” across DRAM and NAND flash memory are expected to “persist through and beyond” 2026 as AI drives up demand.

With the AI boom in full swing, Micron is making more money than ever as companies like OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and Google fill their data centers with powerful chips that come packaged with high-bandwidth memory (HBM). It once again reported record revenue of $13.64 billion this past quarter, a sizeable jump from the $8.71 billion it made at the same time last year.

Micron is retiring the Crucial brand, marking the end of its line of budget-friendly solid-state drives (SSDs) and RAM kits, as reported earlier by VideoCardz. In an announcement on Wednesday, Micron says winding down its consumer-focused business will “improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments” — a.k.a. AI companies.

The brand’s shutdown is a huge blow for PC builders and hobbyists, who are already dealing with skyrocketing RAM prices linked to a surge in demand from AI companies. OpenAI, for example, struck a deal with SK Hynix and Samsung to make up to 900,000 DRAM per month for its Stargate project.