Lenovo stated at the ISC 2026 conference that the trend of rising memory prices has just begun and will evolve into a "new normal" in the future. This judgment paints a rather pessimistic picture for the consumer PC market, shattering many users’ expectations for the price of memory chips such as DRAM and NAND Flash to fall or stabilize. As prices continue to rise, the overall cost of personal computers and various consumer electronics products is being pushed up, and the price system for electronic products that has been relatively "people-friendly" in the past few years is facing reshaping.
As one of the world's largest PC original equipment manufacturers, Lenovo maintains close cooperation with multiple DRAM and NAND Flash suppliers and obtains first-hand supply and demand information through frequent channel research. Thanks to the demand forecasting and order management capabilities accumulated over the years, Lenovo is able to judge the direction of changes in the industry's supply-demand ratio early on. According to Lenovo's analysis, even though major storage manufacturers such as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are accelerating the construction of new wafer fabs and expanding production capacity, the current pace of production expansion is still difficult to fully match the strong demand from the market. It is unclear whether the problem is mainly caused by the slow release of new production capacity or the industry's overall underestimation of future demand, but what is certain is that the tight supply of DRAM and NAND Flash may last longer than previously expected.
Lenovo noted that the upward price trajectory observed starting in the early fourth quarter of 2025 is likely to continue into the end of the decade. According to Lenovo's judgment, by 2030 or even beyond, under existing production capacity planning and supply conditions, memory chip prices are still likely to continue to rise. If the data center construction boom maintains its current pace or even accelerates further, server-side demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence and large-scale data processing will continue to occupy a large amount of DRAM and NAND resources. In this context, it is difficult for DIY PC enthusiasts and ordinary consumers to see "cabbage price" memory and flash memory products in the foreseeable future.
For the majority of PC users and hardware enthusiasts, this means that both installation and upgrade costs will face long-term upward pressure. For a long time, the cyclical price fluctuations of DRAM and NAND have provided consumers with many opportunities to upgrade during price troughs. However, Lenovo’s statement implies that this window period of “low-price hunting” may be significantly shortened or even difficult to occur in the future. While demand growth in the traditional PC market is slowing down, a new round of capital expenditures driven by AI, cloud computing and high-performance computing is changing the supply and demand structure and pricing logic of the storage market.
Currently, leading companies such as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are promoting the construction of new factories or expanding existing production lines in different regions to improve the overall output capabilities of DRAM and NAND. However, it often takes several years from project establishment to full release of production capacity, and under the path of advanced processes and high-level digital 3D NAND technology, the increase in effective supply corresponding to unit investment does not increase linearly. When the demand growth rate exceeds the ramp-up rate of effective production capacity, the tight supply and demand is amplified into a continuous rise in prices, which is transmitted to the prices of complete machines and end products.
Lenovo believes that in the next few years, the price trend of memory chips will be highly dependent on the execution and pace of capacity expansion by SK Hynix, Samsung, Micron and other manufacturers. If the expansion progress lags behind the expansion of data center and AI-related demand, the "new normal" of rising prices will be further consolidated. On the contrary, if the macroeconomic environment changes, corporate capital expenditures slow down, or new technologies improve production efficiency, the storage market may see a new rebalancing of supply and demand in the longer term, but this is not Lenovo's current keynote judgment.
In this context, the affordability of consumer electronics is being challenged. For gamers, content creators and professional users pursuing high-memory configurations, the proportion of storage in the installed budget is likely to continue to rise in the coming years. For OEM brand manufacturers, how to strike a balance between cost pressure and terminal selling price, and how to buffer cost fluctuations through product mix and configuration strategies, will become important considerations that affect their market competitiveness.
Overall, the signal released by Lenovo at ISC 2026 is an early warning for the price environment of the entire PC and storage industry chain in the next few years. In a new round of capital expenditure cycles driven by AI and data centers, DRAM and NAND are no longer just one of the cost components of consumer electronics, but have been redefined as scarce and critical production factors. In the gap between production expansion and demand boom, the judgment that "memory price increases are normalized" is becoming a realistic issue that the entire industry has to face.