Market analyst Trendforce is predicting that both the PC and smartphone markets will actually shrink next year as a consequence of the memory supply crisis (via Hankyung.com). So far, we haven’t seen any dramatic increases in PC system prices, but as Black Friday 2025 hoves into view, the question is for how much longer will that remain the case?
Trendforce recently downgraded its expectations for 2025 from 1.7% growth for the overall PC market to -2.4% shrinkage. For smartphones, Trendforce revised its figures from 0.1% down to -2%.
According to Hankyung, memory accounts for 25% of the cost of AI PCs and 18% of the cost of smartphones. Trendforce reportedly expects laptop prices to rise by five to 15% on account of the 75% increase in RAM module prices that we’ve already seen. Presumably if memory prices go yet higher, retail system prices will follow.
Hankyung also notes that the price of 16 Gb DDR5 chips more than doubled to $24.80 per unit in the month to November 18 on DRAMeXchange. In response, bigger players in the IT industry including Asus and Apple are said to be preemptively purchasing DRAM (and also NAND memory for SSDs), while also discontinuing low-margin products.
So, far, we haven’t seen any really dramatic increases in actual PC system prices. In fact, just recently we spotted the cheapest ever laptop with an RTX 5070 Ti GPU, an MSI Vector 16 HX for just $1,299, an absolute steal.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly in the current context, that system has only 16 GB of DDR5 system memory.
Indeed, Black Friday 2025 is a little over a week away and it will be very interesting to see exactly how all that plays out. Perhaps retailers have a glut of kit ready to go that was spruced at pre-crisis prices and will be sold for a song.
But maybe they can all see the crisis beginning to hit their forward orders and reckon they don’t need to cut prices of existing stock so much to get it shifted. After all, if the memory crisis is still getting worse and PC prices are set to go up, there’s little impetus to sell off current stock for cheap. Today’s non-discounted prices will presumably look like a steal in the months to come.
Exactly how far this will all go is anyone’s guess. Could we see gaming console prices hiked again? Will Valve have to adjust whatever price it had planned for its new Steam Machine PC? Overall, the most positive spin I can put on it is that it feels like if prices can hold out just a few more weeks, this year’s Black Friday could be your last chance for a really good PC deal for a very long while.
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