According to media reports on Thursday citing informed sources, major global PC manufacturers such as HP Inc, Dell Technologies Inc., Acer, and Asus are collectively considering large-scale procurement of memory chips or storage components from Chinese manufacturers for the first time. This move comes as a severe global shortage of memory chips threatens new product launches and drives up operational costs across the technology sector. The intense competition for memory chip production capacity from booming AI data center construction has caused procurement costs for core storage components to soar. Investors are increasingly concerned about the phenomenon dubbed "memory comprehensively consuming consumer electronics profits," which is a core factor pressuring the global stock market's consumer electronics sector. Recent financial reports from global consumer electronics giant Nintendo and Qualcomm highlight that the extreme memory chip shortage and significant price increases since the second half of 2025 not only endanger profit margins but could also lead to substantial reductions in overall production capacity for consumer electronics product lines, thereby impacting total revenue and actual profits. High-performance storage products from China may become a "lifeline" for these companies to maintain production expansion and profit stability, as the top three DRAM/NAND memory chip manufacturers—Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron—face persistently tight capacity and soaring contract and spot market prices. The revelation that PC makers like HP are actively seeking Chinese storage products coincides with the global consumer electronics supply chain struggling to cope with an unprecedented severe memory chip shortage. Memory chips are indispensable, long-term, large-scale procurement items for key hardware product lines ranging from PCs, Nintendo/Sony game consoles, and high-end smartphones to massive AI data centers like "Stargate." The essence of this "memory chip buying frenzy" is that AI data centers led by Google, Microsoft, and Meta are comprehensively "siphoning" global memory/flash production capacity and inventory. The expansion of AI infrastructure has driven up demand for server DRAM, LPDDR, and high-performance storage. The top three memory chip manufacturers and leading storage product providers also prefer to prioritize supply to high-margin segments like large AI data centers, squeezing the quotas available for consumer electronics sectors such as PCs, thereby forcing OEMs to seek alternative supplies. This is why manufacturers like HP and Dell are considering integrating Chinese memory chip supply chains for the first time due to "global memory chip supply constraints, rising costs, and potential disruption to new product releases." For these PC OEM manufacturers, demand for memory chips or component products mainly comes from the DRAM and NAND storage fields. However, in the current supply-demand mismatch, DRAM—particularly standard PC DRAM, high-performance grade DDR5, and LPDDR5X—is the segment experiencing "greater shortage, continuously soaring prices, and a more significant impact on overall machine cost and shipment schedules." NAND/SSD prices are also rising, with enterprise-grade SSDs showing stronger increases, but their priority for PC assembly—"supply constraints first, then cost impact"—typically still lags behind DRAM. The "memory famine" sweeping the global consumer electronics sector and investors' current worries about "memory吞噬ing consumer electronics profits" are not unfounded. Video game giant Nintendo's stock price experienced its largest drop in 18 months on the Japanese market on Wednesday. The company's latest results showed that soaring core component procurement costs, driven by fierce competition for memory chip capacity from booming AI data center construction, is a core factor causing the Switch 2 to fall into a "revenue growth without profit growth" dilemma. Although Switch 2 sales increased, hardware profits were severely eroded. Furthermore, the company's low-price strategy in the Japanese market further diluted profits, and its maintained full-year guidance and hardware sales target were interpreted by the market as relatively conservative. Due to tight memory chip supply, smartphone chip leader Qualcomm's guidance for the second fiscal quarter indicates that revenue from smartphone chip types is expected to fall to approximately $6 billion, reflecting the direct suppression of smartphone shipments by memory chip supply chain bottlenecks. Qualcomm management attributed the main negative variables to tight memory chip supply and significant price increases, emphasizing that surging memory demand from AI data centers is squeezing supply and cost space for mobile phone OEMs, leading some customers to reduce inventory preparations and channel stock, thereby dragging down short-term smartphone chip orders. In consumer electronics like Nintendo's consoles/handhelds and the smartphone sector dominated by Qualcomm, both DRAM and NAND represent non-negligible BOM cost items—and their disruption to hardware gross margins is amplifying during the 2026 "memory price increase cycle." Memory chip manufacturers are reallocating production lines to much more profitable HBM to meet the seemingly "endless" strong demand from AI data centers. Since HBM requires approximately three times the wafer capacity for equivalent memory capacity compared to standard DRAM, this shift significantly reduces supply scale for the consumer electronics industry. This threatens PC, smartphone, and other consumer electronics manufacturers, as well as smaller consumer electronics companies, with production bottlenecks, double-digit price increases, or severely compressed profits. The three dominant memory chip manufacturers—SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron—are concentrating most of their capacity on HBM memory systems. These storage products require much more advanced process capacity and manufacturing/testing complexity compared to DDR series and HDD/SSD storage chips. Therefore, the continuous migration of capacity to HBM by these three memory leaders has largely led to supply shortages for these drive-class storage products. Industry statistics show that since September 2025, prices for the flagship storage product based on DRAM technology—the DDR5 memory module series—have increased overall by more than 370%. DDR4 memory module prices have also risen over 150%. The spot price of DDR5 DRAM chips, the most upstream DDR5 DRAM chip spot price benchmark, has surged as much as 455% since September 2025. Industry research from institutions like Counterpoint Research indicates that AI server systems require at least 8-10 times the data center-grade memory module demand of standard server systems. This massive demand means AI servers currently consume 53% of global monthly memory production capacity, severely squeezing capacity allocation for consumer-grade DDR series memory products. Leading global cloud service providers, including Google and Microsoft, have issued huge procurement orders, even reserving part of the top three memory manufacturers' idle capacity for the next 2-3 years. For PC manufacturers like HP and Dell, in terms of storage product price and shortage intensity, DRAM is currently "rising most sharply and most likely to cause bottlenecks," followed by NAND. On February 2, TrendForce significantly revised its Q1 2026 price outlook upwards: standard DRAM contract prices are预计 to increase quarter-on-quarter by a significant 90%–95%, explicitly stating that PC DRAM prices in Q1 2026 are预计 to "at least double". Meanwhile, NAND Flash contract prices are预计 to increase 55%–60% quarter-on-quarter, and enterprise SSD prices related to data centers are预计 to rise 53%–58% quarter-on-quarter. From the consumer electronics end, the "primary storage demand" for HP/Dell/Acer/Asus essentially consists of two parts: DRAM and NAND Flash. Currently, the storage area experiencing the "most severe shortage and sharpest price increases" is more skewed towards the DRAM side. This is why media reports on Thursday cited sources stating that major PC makers like HP have begun certifying DRAM product series from Chinese memory chip manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies to comprehensively expand alternative supply options for memory chips. According to the reports, US-based PC maker HP plans to closely monitor the specific supply situation of memory chips until around mid-2026. If supply of DRAM-related storage products remains tight and prices continue to rise, HP is highly likely to procure DRAM storage components from CXMT for PC manufacturing destined for non-US markets for the first time. Reports citing sources stated that another US PC maker, Dell, is also certifying CXMT's DRAM product series, primarily due to concerns that storage prices will continue to soar throughout 2026 and that matching supply volumes to meet PC manufacturing capacity will be unavailable. Reports indicated that if Chinese contract suppliers actively procure locally manufactured memory chips, Acer also plans to be open to using such chips. Sources added that another major PC maker, Asus, has requested its Chinese production partners to assist in procuring memory chips for some notebook projects. According to the latest disclosures, CXMT's DRAM product portfolio fully covers the storage product needs of PC manufacturers. Its official information discloses DDR5 and LPDDR5X products suitable for servers/workstations/PCs and flagship mobile devices.
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