By Jiyoung Sohn

Facing soaring memory-chip prices, the world's biggest electronics companies are staring at a list of unpalatable responses: charging consumers more, eating the costs or rejiggering product specs.

Such is the supply-chain disruption wrought by the global drive into artificial intelligence, which requires fleets of data centers with servers needing gargantuan amounts of memory.

That has caused supply to dry up for the makers of smartphones, PCs, gaming consoles and various other electronic gadgets, and triggered a historic price uptick since early last year that is higher than any increase seen before.

Dell Technologies has raised prices for some commercial laptops by as much as 30%, while budget PCs from rival Acer now carry several gigabytes less of multitasking memory. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi recently discontinued the lower-memory variant of its new midtier device and raised prices. Pricier memory has dimmed LG Electronics' TV sales outlook this year.

Lenovo said in an earnings call Thursday that the "unprecedented" memory price surge would constrain demand for PCs and smartphones industry this year. But the firm expects the decline to be offset by higher product prices, especially as it pushes to expand sales of its premium offerings.

And this could be just the beginning. The biggest tech-hardware giants, such as Apple, Nintendo and Samsung Electronics, can bulk-buy ahead of price hikes. But stockpiles only last so long.

The result: A tough year for smartphones, PCs and game consoles is getting worse. Projected shipment declines are now stumbling deeper.

Memory is one of the tech world's most ubiquitous and essential components that come in two major types. DRAM handles more fleeting, immediate tasks like using apps. The other kind, called NAND flash memory, provides long-term storage for photos, videos and other data.

There has been a roughly sevenfold increase in contract prices for DRAM and NAND flash in the past 12 months, according to tracking data from TrendForce, a tech-market researcher.

With investments into AI infrastructure remaining hot, the prospects of memory prices falling soon don't appear high. Supply is expected to remain tight through 2028, industry analysts say.

The memory crunch comes at an inopportune time for the consumer-electronics industry, which is working to bring in more AI capabilities of its own, said Bryan Ma, vice president at International Data Corp., a tech-market-research firm.

"To run an AI model effectively on a smartphone or PC, you generally need richer memory configuration. Now with these pricing pressures, it's pushing the industry backward in having to downgrade," said Ma.

PCs, with memory representing as much as 30% of their total costs, are particularly vulnerable.

Dell increased prices for its commercial laptops from mid-December. The company had warned of the possibility in its earnings call the prior month. "I don't see how this will certainly not make its way into the customer base," said Jeff Clarke, Dell's chief operating officer.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook last month said that while memory prices had a minimal impact on its profit margins in the last quarter, a bigger impact was expected in the current quarter. "We do continue to see market pricing for memory increasing significantly," Cook said.

Samsung said it began seeing memory-supply shortages for mobile devices materialize at the end of last year. "We expect a challenging business environment in 2026," said Seong Cho, a senior executive from Samsung's mobile business unit, during the company's earnings call last month.

Xiaomi President Lu Weibing recently said smartphone price increases were imminent and here for the long run. Its new flagship device, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, no longer has a variant with 256 gigabytes of storage. Instead, it only offers one with double the memory at a roughly $70 premium over the prior generation model.

For smaller smartphone makers with thinner profit margins, the uptick in memory costs shatters the notion that component costs fall over time. "The 'more specs for less money' model that many value brands were built on is no longer sustainable in 2026," said Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, a U.K.-based boutique phonemaker, in a social-media post last month.

After Nintendo said memory could squeeze margins of its Switch 2 console earlier this month, the Japanese company saw shares fall 11% the following day.

Lines of business that don't directly make consumer-electronics products are also warning of the effects of soaring memory prices. Microsoft recently projected sales of its Windows software to PC makers -- a gauge of demand -- will decline by roughly 10% this year.

Qualcomm, which sells its chips to smartphone makers, believes much of the business looks strong, except for one problem. "We just wish there was more memory," said CEO Cristiano Amon.

Write to Jiyoung Sohn at jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 12, 2026 22:00 ET (03:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.