If you’ve been holding off on buying a new laptop or upgrading your phone or tablet hoping for a post-holiday price drop in early 2026, you might want to rethink that strategy. Actually, you should probably stop reading this and go add to cart right now.
We are staring down the barrel of a huge memory shortage, and the ripple effects are going to hurt your wallet.
The culprit? It’s exactly what you think it is: artificial intelligence. While we’re all busy arguing about whether chatbots are actually useful, the massive data centers powering them are vacuuming up the world’s supply of memory components. We’re talking about DRAM, DDR5, and SSDs — the exact same hardware your laptop, smartphone, and other gadgets need to function.
Because big technology companies are buying these components at an industrial scale to fuel the AI boom, there isn’t enough left for consumer gadgets. Mashable reports that Samsung has already doubled the contract price of its DDR5 memory drives. When component costs double, you can bet companies like HP, Dell, and Lenovo aren’t just going to eat that loss. They’re going to pass it on to you.
Shrinkflation comes for your RAM
Here is the really frustrating part: You might end up paying more for a device that is technically worse than what you could buy today.
Usually, tech gets cheaper and faster over time. But according to a grim forecast from market-research firm TrendForce, we are about to see the hardware equivalent of shrinkflation. To keep price tags from looking too scary, manufacturers are planning to downgrade specifications.
TrendForce predicts that low-end smartphones might revert to shipping with just 4GB of RAM in 2026. In an era where apps are getting heavier, 4GB is barely usable. It’s a big step backward.
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It’s not just memory, either. Counterpoint Research notes that to offset the skyrocketing cost of RAM, which could jump another 40% by mid-2026, manufacturers are starting to cut corners elsewhere. We’re likely to see downgrades in camera modules, cheaper display panels, and lower-quality audio components.
So, not only is the average selling price of smartphones expected to rise by nearly 7%, but that extra cash might get you a phone with a worse screen and a stuttering processor. It’s a brutal double whammy for consumers, especially in the budget segment.
The budget killer
While this affects everyone, it’s going to hit the Philippine market particularly hard because we love our value-for-money devices.
The “flagship killer” era might be on pause. Counterpoint’s data shows that the sub-$200 (roughly P11,000) price bracket is facing the steepest production cost hikes — up to 30%. Brands that operate on razor-thin margins, like the Chinese original equipment manufacturers we see everywhere (think HONOR, OPPO, and vivo), have less wiggle room to absorb these costs compared to giants like Samsung and Apple.
Speaking of Apple, don’t think you’re safe just because you buy iPhones. While the American company has the scale to weather the supply chain storm better than most, TrendForce suggests it might stop its usual practice of discounting older models. That strategy of buying an iPhone 15 when the iPhone 17 comes out to save money? That might not work next year.
The bottom line is pretty clear. The supply chain is tightening, AI data centers are hungry, and memory prices are spiraling. If you need a new daily driver — especially a laptop where 8GB of RAM is becoming the unfortunate standard again — maybe it’s best to buy it while the specs are still decent and the prices are still sane.
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