this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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Technology

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Memory price hikes will kill off budget PCs and smartphones (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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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.

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[–] CyberSeeker@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Maybe a positive side effect will be OS and applications beginning to be more conscious of their RAM consumption. I am absolutely certain that due to the era of cheap memory storage, applications (browsers especially) have gotten insanely bloated.

Keep AI models out of your web browser and core operating system, and maybe 4GB can still cut it.

[–] ByteSorcerer@beehaw.org 4 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately not likely going to happen since AI is used more and more to write software, and AI doesn't tend to write very efficient software.