Lenovo: Memory price increases are the "new normal," high DRAM and NAND prices will continue beyond 2030.

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The era of high memory prices may never end. At the ISC 2026 conference, Lenovo issued a warning: DRAM and NAND flash prices have entered a structural upward cycle. Even as major manufacturers continue to expand production, prices are unlikely to return to early 2025 levels, and rising prices will ultimately become the "new normal" in 2030 and beyond.

Lenovo showcased the price trends of DRAM and NAND products during its presentation at the conference. According to its analysis, although major memory manufacturers such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are accelerating the construction of new production capacities, the effect of this expansion will be hard to bridge the supply-demand gap. Prices are expected to remain high for the long term. Meanwhile, Micron has openly stated it cannot meet market demand, including for strategic customers. Samsung and SK Hynix have issued similar signals, and the supply shortage is unlikely to ease in the short term.

This assessment will have far-reaching impacts on the entire consumer electronics supply chain. Lenovo warns that high memory costs will be passed down to PCs, game consoles, smartphones, and all terminal products carrying memory or SSDs. Over the next decade, consumers will face ongoing pressure from rising device prices.

Price runaway began in late 2025, and the surge continues

According to data presented by Lenovo at ISC 2026, this round of rapid memory price increases started in the late third quarter to early fourth quarter of 2025. At that time, DRAM and NAND prices began breaking away from previous cyclical fluctuations, accelerating upward to levels rarely anticipated by the market.

Lenovo pointed out that, although major manufacturers are continuously expanding production capacity and building new wafer plants to address the supply-demand imbalance, the actual effect of these measures in lowering prices is extremely limited. The speed at which the supply-demand gap is widening has outpaced the pace of capacity ramp-up. The possibility of prices returning to early 2025 levels is decreasing.

It is worth noting that the relevant comments made by Lenovo’s speaker at the conference had a somewhat joking tone, but the judgment of high prices becoming normal from 2030 onwards is still regarded as an official industry warning signal.

Supplier expansion plans cannot quench immediate thirst

Among major memory manufacturers, SK Hynix has announced a significant acceleration of its capacity expansion roadmap, originally planned for after 2040, now moved ahead to post-2030. By then, memory output is expected to triple the current level.

However, both Lenovo and industry observers remain skeptical on whether this expansion plan can truly resolve the supply-demand contradiction. Micron has stated that it cannot supply sufficiently, even for strategic key clients. Samsung and SK Hynix have also taken a pessimistic view. In fact, several leading manufacturers are reaping considerable profits from this cycle of supply shortage.

Against the backdrop of surging demand for AI infrastructure, the demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and standard DRAM continues to grow robustly. Whether the additional supply brought by expansion can match the concurrent increase in demand still remains unknown.

End consumers under pressure—across-the-board price hikes are inevitable

Lenovo’s warning means that high prices for memory and SSDs will continue to be passed on to end products over the next ten years. PCs, game consoles, smartphones, and other consumer electronics equipped with storage devices will face higher material cost pressures.

For ordinary consumers, this means the era of low-priced PCs and entry-level smart devices may be disappearing. The enterprise side is also not spared—procurement costs for servers and data center infrastructure will rise alongside memory prices, further raising the overall investment threshold for AI and cloud computing infrastructure.

Lenovo’s proactive disclosure of this assessment at the ISC 2026 conference has been interpreted as a forward-looking budget warning for procurement decision-makers and enterprise customers: High memory prices are not just a temporary shock, but a structural variable that must be incorporated into long-term cost planning.

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