Previously, the National Development and Reform Commission’s Price Monitoring Center issued a statement indicating that since September 2025, due to explosive demand growth and a cliff-like shortage of capacity, the global memory market gap has widened, leading to continuous increases in memory chip prices. Over the past month, the rate of increase has accelerated, and it is recommended to monitor the impact of storage chip prices on downstream markets.

So, which downstream industries will be affected?

01

All categories of storage prices surge across the board, with the price hike trend intensifying

The sharp rise in hardware storage prices has persisted for half a year, with the upward trend continuing to strengthen.

This round of price increases covers the two main mainstream storage categories—DRAM and NAND Flash—as well as specialized segments like NOR Flash and automotive-grade storage, showing a pattern of “full-category general rise with stepwise expansion of the increase.”

In the DRAM sector, enterprise-level DDR5 memory modules have become the leading price increase. From early 2025 to February 2026, spot prices for DDR5 memory chips surged over 455%, with high-end server DDR5 modules increasing by more than 600%. Some high-capacity, high-spec products saw prices jump more than tenfold. Consumer DDR5 memory modules also saw significant increases, generally rising 250%–400%, with some popular models more than quadrupling in price compared to six months earlier. In the NAND Flash sector, contract prices for 3D NAND wafers have been raised for six consecutive quarters, with quarterly increases exceeding 20% from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Driven by this, mainstream consumer SSD prices have increased by 50%–120% over six months, while enterprise-grade high-capacity, high-performance SSDs, which use more durable and customized solutions, have surged over 200%.

UBS currently forecasts that DDR contract prices will increase by 72% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026 (previously +62%), with server DDR5 contract prices reaching $1.00 per Gb. Additionally, UBS expects NAND contract prices to rise 65% QoQ (previously +40%).

Supply-demand imbalance in distribution channels is even more pronounced. A domestic storage distributor admitted that the core contradiction in the industry is “high prices but no stock,” meaning that even if downstream customers accept higher prices, they still struggle to obtain sufficient spot inventory. Even if manufacturers expand production lines, it will take at least a year, making it impossible to fill the current supply gap. New storage chip production lines, from construction and debugging to yield ramp-up and mass delivery, require at least 12–18 months, so short-term supply improvements are unlikely, and the upward price trend is difficult to reverse quickly.

02

Server and computing power markets: cost surges reshape business logic

The price surge in storage chips first impacts the core AI industry chain—servers and data centers—where rising costs not only reshape the cost model but also directly alter the commercial rules of the computing power market.

Currently, core enterprise storage chip prices have surged 5–10 times, directly increasing data center hardware renewal and construction costs. For example, a high-end AI server with an H100 GPU costs over 300,000 RMB just for 32 sticks of 64GB memory; an 8-card RTX 5090 with CPU and memory now costs nearly 500,000 RMB, up from 350,000 RMB; the price of a full H200 system has risen from over 1.9 million RMB to nearly 2.4 million RMB.

This cost explosion has directly impacted downstream projects. A distributor of data center server processors revealed that “the entire chain’s cost increase has caused many clients to halt sales and delay projects. For example, a user completed a tender last August, and after the integrator won the bid, memory prices increased 7–8 times, making the original quotes no longer cover costs. Some projects can only be postponed or canceled.”

With the high costs of self-built computing power, the rental market for computing resources has experienced explosive growth and entered the strongest price increase cycle in history. Server vendors’ sales staff noted that, unlike a few years ago when demand was tepid, demand for computing power leasing has surged significantly this year because, after memory prices rose, the cost for enterprises to build their own servers far exceeds the cost of leasing.

Overseas cloud providers have already begun adjusting prices, with Amazon AWS increasing some GPU instance prices by 15%, and Google Cloud’s H100 rental prices rising by 20%. Domestic providers like UCloud announced price increases for all products and services starting March 1. Supply shortages have turned the computing power leasing market into a “seller’s market,” with “having computing power = having influence” becoming industry consensus. Companies that have already planned or are early to deploy computing centers and high-performance chips will have a clear first-mover advantage.

03

Smartphone costs under pressure, industry initiates largest collective price adjustment in five years

Compared to data centers, the consumer electronics industry—facing end consumers—experiences dual pressures of “costs rising and sales sensitivity,” prompting leading domestic smartphone brands to initiate price adjustments.

OPPO, OnePlus, vivo, Xiaomi, iQOO, Honor, and other major domestic brands plan to start a new round of price adjustments in early March 2026. This is the largest and most significant collective price increase in the past five years. Even Apple, the industry profit leader, faces a 100% price hike request from suppliers like Samsung during storage procurement negotiations, directly raising supply chain costs.

This industry-wide price hike mainly stems from profit margin disparities among manufacturers, leading to different cost absorption capacities. Apple captures over 80% of global smartphone industry profits, with some reports indicating profit shares as high as 83–91%. In contrast, domestic mainstream brands have long prioritized extreme cost performance to meet domestic market demands, with gross margins generally only 5%–10%, far below Apple’s approximately 40% and Samsung’s around 20%. When storage procurement costs rise equally, high-margin overseas brands can absorb some of the cost increases by sacrificing profit margins to stabilize market expectations and sales; low-margin domestic brands, however, have little room to absorb cost increases and must raise prices to avoid losses.

From a product structure perspective, the higher the proportion of memory in a smartphone’s bill of materials (BOM), the greater the impact of price increases. Mid- and low-end phones have a higher memory cost ratio, making them more affected. Compared to Europe, America, and Japan, the Chinese market has a higher proportion of mid- and low-end phones, so the impact of rising costs is broader, and terminal prices tend to increase more significantly.

Meanwhile, the global memory market is still dominated by overseas manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, with domestic storage still in development. Overseas phone manufacturers and top storage suppliers have deeper cooperation and stronger bargaining power, often locking prices through long-term contracts to hedge against price hikes. Domestic manufacturers, with weaker bargaining power, must bear the cost increases themselves. Notably, Apple’s iPhone series has long adopted conservative memory configurations; even the iPhone 17 Pro maxes out at 12GB RAM, while Android flagship models typically come with 16GB or more, making Android devices more directly impacted by memory price increases.

04

PC and DIY markets: full-category price adjustments, industry landscape shifting

Beyond smartphones, the laptop and PC DIY markets are also affected, with price hikes covering all product tiers—from entry-level office notebooks to high-end gaming laptops.

Leading PC brands like Lenovo, Dell, and HP have begun adjusting prices across their entire product lines, with increases generally between 10% and 30%. Some high-end models have seen price hikes exceeding 5,000 RMB, and overall, mainstream laptops have increased by 10%–20%. The DIY market also sees widespread price rises, especially in memory modules and SSDs, significantly raising build costs.

Gartner reports that, to cope with rising memory costs, PC manufacturers have no choice but to raise retail prices. In the future, it will be difficult to offer high-performance hardware at “entry-level” prices for gamers.

Interestingly, the secondhand market shows a phenomenon of “larger memory equals better resale value,” with high-memory used laptops and desktops appreciating in value against the trend. Devices used for over six months still sell close to their original launch prices, mainly because new device prices keep rising and supply of large-memory products is tight.

Amid this rigid cycle of “cost increase—retail price hike,” Apple held its spring product launch on March 4. This event was not only Apple’s first spring launch in Shanghai but also introduced several new products, including the iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo. The MacBook Neo, with its groundbreaking low price, became Apple’s cheapest laptop ever, breaking the industry’s price increase consensus and delivering a strong shock to the already shifting industry landscape.

The MacBook Neo’s low-price strategy is essentially Apple’s precise hedge against the price hike cycle, leveraging its entire supply chain advantage. First, Apple maintains a conservative storage baseline, with the MacBook Neo starting at 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD, controlling core storage configurations to minimize the impact of storage price surges and avoid the risks associated with large-capacity storage hardware price spikes. Second, Apple’s gross margin exceeds 40%, far above the 10–20% typical of Windows-based manufacturers, providing ample profit buffer. This allows Apple to cut into the entry-level segment during the industry-wide price hikes, as detailed in “Fallen to 4000, Apple Finally Bows.”

05

New energy vehicles: price increase transmission, becoming a new cost pain point

With the rapid development of smart cars, vehicles have become another key application scenario for storage chips. The ongoing price hike is now transmitting into the NEV industry, creating new cost pressures for automakers.

The NEV industry heavily depends on chip supply, but in the global competition for storage capacity, car companies are at a disadvantage because their product margins are much lower than those of AI industry clients. The supply stability of automotive-grade storage chips faces severe challenges. UBS estimates that the cost increase from storage chip price hikes for a typical mid-sized smart EV can reach 4,000–7,000 RMB per vehicle, significantly squeezing profit margins. Storage chip price increases have become the largest cost pressure for the automotive industry in 2026, even surpassing raw material costs for batteries.

In smart NEVs, storage chips are used across multiple vehicle systems. The largest application is the in-vehicle infotainment system (IVI), accounting for about 80% of storage use, including central control displays, audio systems, and multimedia storage. Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) account for about 10%, handling camera data buffering, radar data processing, and autonomous driving algorithms. Other systems like smart cockpits, autonomous driving domains, vehicle information systems, and instrument panels also rely heavily on storage chips.

A typical smart vehicle is equipped with 4–16 DRAM chips for temporary data processing and 2–6 NAND Flash chips for long-term storage, along with SRAM, eFlash, Nor Flash, EEPROM, and other storage types. As autonomous driving levels increase, the demand for storage capacity, performance, and number of chips will continue to grow, further amplifying the cost impact of rising storage prices.

06

The price hike is reshaping consumer behavior and industry structure

This ongoing storage price increase has gone beyond simple cost fluctuations, triggering changes across the entire industry chain—from consumer behavior and corporate strategies to industry landscape.

For consumers, widespread price increases in terminal products lead to longer upgrade cycles and weakened purchasing power. If prices continue to rise, a negative cycle may form: “cost increase—terminal price hike—demand slowdown—manufacturer cutbacks—further supply-demand imbalance,” impacting recovery in electronics and automotive sectors.

For corporate strategies, rising procurement costs accelerate digital transformation toward cloud solutions. For small and medium enterprises, building in-house servers and local IT systems now costs more than long-term leasing, making cloud services the preferred way to hedge against hardware inflation, which will further increase cloud industry concentration.

For industry structure, this price hike cycle offers a historic opportunity for domestic storage industry development. Facing persistent shortages and rising prices, downstream manufacturers are increasing procurement from domestic suppliers, and domestic storage companies are accelerating capacity expansion.