In a span of five hours on Thursday, Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have increased the prices of popular products such as Xbox consoles, MacBooks and iPads.
The two companies attributed the adjustments to an unprecedented shortage of memory chips, driven by the boom in artificial intelligence. And despite high-profile efforts to expand supply, the shortage and its effects on consumer prices are not likely to end anytime soon.
On Monday, Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. are expected to announce new chipmaking investments totaling hundreds of billions of dollars, according to South Korean media reports. The Samsung Group, of which Samsung Electronics is a part, is expected to reveal a 1,000 trillion won ($651 billion) investment plan over the next decade, which would represent the largest program of its kind in the country’s history, the newspaper reported. Maeil Business Newspaper on Friday.
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Still, industry executives warn that shortages are likely to persist for years as new data centers absorb large volumes of chips. Micron Technology Inc. Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra said Wednesday that while chip availability could improve in 2028, there is “no visibility” on when supply will catch up with demand.
That means chip prices will likely continue to rise, forcing consumers to pay more for laptops, smartphones and other devices. The price of a DDR5 chip, typically used in personal computers, has already increased more than four times in the last year, according to data from inSpectrum Tech Inc.
“With supply and demand likely to remain tight through 2028, prices are unlikely to fall before 2027,” said Jake Silverman, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Consumer device prices may have to continue rising, albeit at a more moderate pace, just to sustain healthy profit margins.”
The AI infrastructure boom, led by Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing chips, has turned the memory market upside down. The shortage was made worse by the fact that the industry did not anticipate this explosion in demand.
After facing a huge oversupply of chips following the Covid-19 pandemic, companies stopped investing in expanding production capacity. Now, the few manufacturers that survived — some barely — find themselves in an unusual position. Investors love them, customers are desperate, and profits are at historic highs.
It’s not just memory chips that are missing. Logic chips used for computing are also in short supply, driving prices up.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest maker of advanced logic chips, will not be able to meet demand driven by American customers even as more production capacity comes online in the United States in the coming years, Chief Executive CC Wei told shareholders this month.
“The development of AI has gone beyond our expectations,” he later told reporters.
Wei added that he even asked Jensen Huang why the Nvidia boss hadn’t warned him in advance about the AI boom. According to Wei, Huang also did not foresee the explosion in demand.
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“No one anticipated this would happen — including TSMC,” Wei said.
Companies are expanding production as quickly as possible.
TSMC’s capital investments this year alone are expected to reach $56 billion. SK Hynix plans a US$29 billion listing in the United States, after chairman Chey Tae-won said earlier this month that it intends to double production capacity over the next five years.
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And even before Monday’s expected announcement, Samsung was already planning to spend more than $73 billion this year on capacity expansion and research.
Micron, for its part, is trying to extract additional production from its current facilities while incorporating capacity from an acquisition in Taiwan. The company is also building new factories in Idaho and New York state.
“We’re doing everything we can,” Manish Bhatia, Micron’s executive vice president of global operations, said in an interview Wednesday. “We will increase capital investments later this year to drive productivity improvements and extract more production from our existing factories.”
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For consumers looking to buy an Xbox or MacBook, however, this represents little progress and has come too late. Sony Group Corp., for example, raised the price of its flagship console, the PlayStation 5, by up to $150 in March. Since then, memory prices have continued to rise.
© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.
