During the summer break, the "back-to-school tech trio" of smartphones, laptops, and tablets usually sees a sales boom. However, with global storage chip prices continuing to surge, major manufacturers are raising their prices. Those who chose to wait did not find discounts, but instead faced a wave of price hikes.
According to a report from Guangzhou Daily, Ms. Chen, who was preparing equipment for her engineering major son, felt the high cost of this year's back-to-school season. Due to her son's need for programming and drafting, a high-performance laptop, a mid-range smartphone, and an iPad with a stylus were required. The total cost for a complete set of student tech products came to nearly 18,000 yuan. Compared to the price paid by parents for the same configuration last year, Ms. Chen spent almost 5,000 yuan more this year.
The "Back-to-School Trio" is More Expensive
Buying just over a month earlier saved over 2,100 yuan. According to a report from Jimu News, Wuhan resident Mr. Si recently told reporters that after this year's college entrance exams, his sister asked him to help choose a computer for her university studies. In June, he purchased a Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro16 laptop with an R7-H255 processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive for about 5,769 yuan. Recently, when Mr. Si checked the price of the same model again, he found that the original store, JD.com's No. 1 Member Store, showed it as out of stock. At JD.com's Lenovo official flagship store, the same product was listed at 7,819 yuan (after a national subsidy). "Good thing I bought it early; otherwise, the price increase would have been too severe," Mr. Si said. He also noted that an HP Shadow精灵 Max he purchased for 8,199 yuan in February now sells for 11,781 yuan on the same platform.
Besides computers, smartphone prices have also changed. According to a report from Red Star News, on August 2, Xiaomi's official store prices showed that several of its phone models had officially increased in price, with rises ranging from 300 to 500 yuan. A digital salesperson told Jimu News that prices for some Xiaomi phones had indeed gone up. The salesperson mentioned that some consumers who visited the store after the price adjustment were surprised by the changes. Jimu News also noted that prices for some tablets have fluctuated. The reporter purchased an iPad mini 7 128GB eSIM version in February 2025 for 3,499 yuan after a national subsidy. On August 3, the reporter found that the original store was out of stock for that model. Checking JD.com's Apple self-operated flagship store, the same product was priced at 4,799 yuan after discounts. On Apple's Tmall official flagship store, the same model was listed at 6,099 yuan. When asked about the price change, Apple's Tmall customer service explained that Apple had recently adjusted pricing for some products, and the current page price is the latest. Since the iPad mini 7 eSIM version costs over 6,000 yuan, it is temporarily ineligible for national subsidies in some regions.
Hard Drives, Memory, and Graphics Cards Are All Rising in Price
According to a Guangzhou Daily report on August 5, multiple vendors at Tianhe Computer City stated that computer prices are now rising across the board, mainly due to increases in memory, graphics cards, and hard drives compared to the same period last year. A vendor named A Jian, who has operated in the computer mall for years, shared the recent market trends: "Hard drives, memory, and graphics cards are all seeing price hikes, climbing higher and higher." Graphics cards are the core driver of this round of price increases. A Jian revealed that the procurement price for a popular consumer gaming graphics card was just over 2,700 yuan last month, but now it has generally risen to between 3,300 and 3,400 yuan, a significant increase. The rising graphics card prices have driven up the cost of gaming laptops. A mainstream brand's popular gaming laptop, which sold for 8,000 yuan last year, now has a market price of 12,000 yuan, an increase of over 4,000 yuan per unit. Even regular home and office laptops have not been spared. Previously, basic models priced at over 3,000 yuan now retail for over 5,000 yuan, with a price increase of nearly 2,000 yuan per unit. Online, a check of the price trend chart on the Dewu app shows that the average market transaction prices for several popular high-performance laptops have risen significantly. For example, the average market transaction price for a popular model from a certain brand increased from 9,237 yuan to 13,834 yuan, a rise of 4,597 yuan, or nearly 50%. "Since last National Day, memory and hard drives have been on a continuous upward trend, and they have recently stabilized. For instance, DDR5 memory modules cost just over 300 yuan before last National Day, but now the procurement price has risen to 1,500 yuan," A Jian said. High-end DDR5 memory has seen the most dramatic increases, with low-end DDR3 and DDR4 rising by several hundred yuan, and high-end models increasing by 2,000 to 3,000 yuan.
In fact, the price surge is spreading from core categories like smartphones and PCs to peripheral hardware. Products that are often overlooked but affect our daily lives include camera memory cards, which have seen prices triple or quadruple, smart home appliances facing rising chip costs, and even emerging devices like AI glasses and drones are being impacted.
AI is Competing for Production Capacity, Consumers Face a Wave of Price Increases
News reports indicate that the root of the price hikes lies in AI. The rapid expansion of AI data centers is consuming a massive amount of storage chip production capacity. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are prioritizing their production lines for the more profitable AI-specific high-bandwidth memory (HBM), leading to a sharp contraction in the supply of consumer-grade DRAM and NAND flash memory, which naturally drives prices up. "The price of storage chips has risen fivefold, driving up CPU, PCB, and other components. Then TSMC raises its foundry fees, Qualcomm can't bear the cost and raises chip prices, and it all ends up on the consumer's plate," said Mr. Wang, a digital business owner with over a decade of experience. "AI profits go to a few big companies, but it's us ordinary people who end up paying." A computer's price increase can equal the cost of a phone, and a phone's increase can add up to over a thousand yuan. This wave of price hikes triggered by AI is ultimately being paid for by ordinary families.
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