Lenovo has told its retailers that every quotation and price it issued expired on January 1, 2026. The company blamed a worsening memory shortage and the rush to build AI into PCs, and urged resellers to place orders quickly to lock in existing prices.
It is not alone. ASUS said in January it would raise notebook prices, gaming models included, by 15% to 25%. Acer flagged rises of 10% to 20% on some systems in February. HP has warned retailers to expect increases too, and Lenovo has already pushed prices up by around 20%. Dell is among the brands that have raised prices as well.
Why memory costs more
AI-related uses, meaning server DRAM, workstation memory and high-bandwidth memory, took more than 50% of global DRAM consumption in 2025, up from 35% in 2023. Some chipmakers have moved production away from notebook memory toward higher-margin data-centre parts, which leaves less for laptops and phones.
Acer chairman and CEO Jason Chen said late last month that memory and storage chip prices had risen between 50% and 100%. Anthony Peter Bonadero, president of Compal Electronics, the world’s largest contract notebook maker, said DRAM on the spot market had climbed nearly 5.5 times in six months, while NAND flash had almost quadrupled.
Omdia analyst Jeff Lin told Nikkei Asia that price rises are now unavoidable. “It’s not that they want to increase prices, but they have to, otherwise the business simply won’t work,” he said. Some of the burden will fall on suppliers and retail partners, he added, but final price tags “will inevitably rise.”
What families will notice
Apple has raised prices on its premium laptops. The new MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip starts about $200 above the previous generation from late 2024, and the top models cost as much as $400 more.
A gaming PC executive who spoke to Nikkei Asia expects high-end notebooks to go up by $200 to $300. Stockpiles some makers built in the third quarter of 2025 started running dry around the end of the March quarter, he said. “I am very pessimistic about the PC industry this year.”
He put it in household terms. “If you are from an ordinary family and you have two children who both need new PCs this year and each one is $200 more expensive, that means you have to spend $400 more,” he said. “Will you still buy them now, or stick with the old ones for a little longer?”
In Australia, retailers are caught in the middle. ChannelNews reported that analysts expect sales to soften as households keep older machines rather than buy new AI-enabled ones. At least two distributors bought hundreds of notebooks before costs surged and are now selling them at up to four times their previous profit.
Laptop builders are leaning toward higher-end business models over entry-level ones to make the most of scarce memory, an executive at touchpad chip supplier ELAN Microelectronics said. Shipments keep falling, he said, “but the value per unit is increasing.”
Bonadero expects PC shipments to drop 15% to 20% in the January-March quarter. “We expect the component constraints to persist at least through 2026 and into 2027,” he said.
Sources
- Taiwanese semiconductor firms face supply shortages in Japan
- Retailers Facing Notebook Downturn As Smart Distributors Take Advantage Of Memory Shortages
