Smartphone and PC prices are set to rise this year, with consumer products hit by a shortage of memory chips caused by the accelerated construction of artificial intelligence data centers, writes the FT. Arm, Qualcomm and Samsung warned this week that the global race to build a massive AI infrastructure is putting increasing pressure on the supply of components needed for mobile devices and other home electronics. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — the annual event where manufacturers present their latest products — Arm CEO Rene Haas said the restrictions in the memory chip market were «the most severe we've seen in at least two decades.» For his part, Samsung co-chief executive TM Roh said the shortage is «unprecedented» and will have an «inevitable» impact on consumers. In the past year, companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta and OpenAI have committed to investing billions of dollars in building data centers capable of supporting advanced artificial intelligence models and products, convinced that this technology will transform entire industries. These huge computing facilities also require massive amounts of next-generation high-bandwidth memory, known by the acronym HBM. As a result, memory suppliers — a market dominated by Samsung and South Korea's SK Hynix, along with US company Micron — have directed more manufacturing resources to advanced HBM, at the expense of memory for consumer products such as smartphones and laptops. Samsung announced Thursday that its fourth-quarter operating profit tripled, largely due to sales of HBM. Micron said in December it began phasing out its consumer «Crucial» brand, citing explosive data center demand for AI. Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala said the memory chip shortage is «pretty dramatic» and the main cause of the shortage is «data center deployments by five or six companies globally with an incredible amount of capital investment.» According to Morgan Stanley analysts, the steep increase in memory costs, which began in the last quarter of last year, will cause most companies in the field of technological hardware to increase the prices of their products «significantly» in the first half of this year. This will likely lead to declines in sales of Android smartphones and Windows PCs. One exception is Apple, which has not raised prices for its latest iPhone 17 range despite the effects of tariffs and supply chain disruptions.
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