HP and Dell have a pricing problem, and this time it's the customers holding the bill. What began as a trickle of warnings from PC makers has become an industry-wide reset: contract prices up 15% to 20%, commercial product lines repriced by as much as 30%, and the outlook getting darker, not brighter.
The root cause sits in memory fabs. Chipmakers are steering capacity toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI data centers, where margins are fatter, leaving consumer DRAM and NAND short. On the demand side, two waves collided at once: the Windows 10 end-of-support refresh cycle and the industry's "AI PC" marketing push.
The result is a DRAM price supercycle — IDC's term for it. The analyst firm says the average computer could cost up to 8% more in 2026 because of memory shortages, though the price moves vendors are actually making run well past that figure.
IDC has confirmed that Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer and Asus have all warned clients of tougher conditions ahead, "confirming 15–20 percent hikes and contract resets as an industry-wide response." Lenovo let its existing quotations expire on January 1, 2026, replacing them with higher prices. Dell began raising prices across its commercial lines on December 17, 2025, with increases ranging from 10% to 30%.
Dell chief operating officer Jeff Clarke has said he has "never seen memory chip costs rise so quickly," with expenses climbing across every product line.
HP chief executive Enrique Lores has warned that the second half of 2026 could be particularly difficult and that the company will raise prices if necessary. Memory accounts for roughly 15% to 18% of a PC's cost, he has noted — the swing factor in the bill of materials.
The shipment numbers are already reflecting the squeeze. Gartner expects surging memory costs to push global PC shipments down 10.4% in 2026 while lifting average PC prices 17% above 2025 levels. IDC, in a June update, forecast an 11.3% shipment decline and said meaningful relief was unlikely before the end of 2027.
The pain is not evenly shared. DIY builders and smaller vendors, who buy memory without volume leverage, face the steepest increases — leaving the big OEMs best positioned to lock in supply and even gain share from smaller assemblers, IDC argues.
Gartner has also floated a longer-run warning: if memory costs stay elevated, the entry-level PC market could disappear entirely by 2028, forcing buyers toward pricier machines or longer upgrade cycles. For anyone shopping for a laptop, the market's message is plain: fewer cheap machines, higher prices, and waiting will only make the receipt worse.