Market tracker TrendForce says Dell and Lenovo have already raised PC prices 15–20% on the shortage, and contract prices are set to climb again in the second quarter of 2026.
The DRAM in a new laptop competes for the same fab capacity as the memory going into AI training clusters. The buyers paying the highest contract prices right now are the cloud platforms and AI labs on multi-quarter procurement deals, not the PC and phone OEMs negotiating quarterly. That reordering of who sets the marginal price is the mechanism behind the festive-season disappointment already showing up on consumer electronics shelves.
Dell raised PC prices 15–20% in mid-December 2025 and Lenovo is set to follow in January 2026, with both citing the same AI-driven memory crunch. For shoppers in India, Moneycontrol reports that the holiday discounts on offer are smaller than they look because the underlying list prices have already moved.
The supply story is not really a silicon shortage. It is an allocation problem. Hyperscaler AI buildouts have locked in memory volumes that pull production capacity out of the consumer pool. Sourceability traces the surge in DRAM contract prices to that AI-driven reallocation, and IntuitionLabs describes the same effect from the supply side: AI demand is diverting capacity that used to flow into PC and phone DRAM.
The result is a two-tier market. Tier one serves AI infrastructure, where the buyer pays whatever the spot market demands and signs multi-year contracts. Tier two serves consumer electronics, where OEMs renegotiate quarterly and are now finding prices move against them before their budgeting cycle ends. TrendForce's March 31, 2026 forecast calls for another round of contract price increases in 2Q26 as AI server demand continues to set the marginal price. The contract market leads retail, so any further move there shows up in device pricing one to two quarters later.
IDC's read on the shortage extends the same mechanism to smartphones. Phone OEMs face the same DRAM and NAND reallocation, but on tighter margins and with a buyer base more willing to switch brands over small price differences. IDC treats 2026 as a year when both PC and smartphone markets absorb higher memory costs instead of seeing consumer-friendly price cuts.
For shoppers walking into a store during the festive window, the discount on the sticker is real. It is being applied to a base price that has already moved up. Dell and Lenovo's 15–20% PC hikes are the first public confirmation from the major OEMs. The phone side has not yet produced matching announcements, which means either the price pressure is concentrated in PCs for now, or the smartphone OEMs are absorbing it while they can. The next major handset launch with a higher base-model sticker will be informative.
Three signals will show what comes next. TrendForce's 2Q26 contract prints in May and June will set the direction for the next OEM pricing round. Capacity additions from Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron are routing to AI buyers first, so incremental supply does not flow back to consumer devices by default. IDC's next market update will show whether phone OEMs are also raising base-model prices or are still absorbing the cost.
The festive deals are real. The list prices under them are not what they were a year ago, and TrendForce's 2Q26 outlook points to another move up.