IT purchasing is being hit by a double-whammy: Enterprises want to ensure their hardware is good enough to support AI, even as memory shortages caused by AI deployments are driving steep price increases for Macs, iPhones, iPads, tablets, Android devices and Windows PCs.
The root cause is widely known. JP Morgan estimates DRAM prices have risen more than 400% since the beginning of 2024 as data center construction and hyperscaler demand consumed a gargantuan chunk of global memory production capacity.
“It is not a secret that the industry will stay in shortage for multiple years,” warned analyst Jay Kwon. IDC analysis expects DRAM manufacturing capacity to fall short of demand, while SK Hynix believes demand will exceed supply well into the next decade. AI data centers are absorbing around 70% of output.
This tough provisioning juggling act plays out as economic insecurity continues and the supply of key materials beyond memory also remains constrained. It makes for a perfect storm of shrinking purchasing budgets, rapid price increases, and competitive pressure to accelerate ongoing patterns of digital transformation.
To some extent, business leasing schemes will probably become more popular, while IaaS and SaaS vendors will widen their offerings to also include the kind of AI services businesses need. But the scale of the problem is pretty clear:
These price increases are not isolated; they reflect the global memory price challenge. Gartner expects memory prices will increase roughly 130% by the end of the year, while TrendForce’s recent survey sees further DRAM price increases ahead.
This is a global challenge affecting businesses and consumers everywhere in real time. What’s important about these price hikes is their unpredictability; in most cases, business leaders will not have known the increases were coming, which means existing, pre-determined purchasing budgets do not reflect this new reality.
“The IT landscape faces a seismic shift, and its epicenter is memory,” according to Insight. “The market dynamics have fundamentally changed.” In other words, this challenge is long-term, structural, and here to stay.
As a result, every device that contains memory or a processor will get more expensive; this is already particularly visible in networking equipment, the cost of which climbed up to seven-fold in some cases this year. Games consoles, smart TVs and streaming boxes — including Apple TV — have not been spared.
IT purchasers are looking at these trends and wondering what to do. When it comes to PCs, price unpredictability means that lower cost isn’t necessarily an advantage. It makes more sense to spend a little more today to end up with a system that can continue working for your business for five years or more. Purchasers want longer hardware life cycles and are more willing than they once were to look at refurbished devices, which is driving growth in reconditioned markets.
(Apple sees this, which is why it recently raised trade-in prices for its kit as it seeks to recondition and resell its own products where possible.)
Reliability, resale value, and recycling and energy costs need to be considered, concerns that are in part driving businesses toward Macs. Regular readers will recognize the numbers often add up. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact research says lower support costs mean Macs save hundreds of dollars per seat in comparison to PCs over just three years, while Cisco has reported significant cost savings.
Waiting for prices to stabilize isn’t a strategy. All the analyses show there will be no change for some time. Seeking some resilience, purchasers are seeking multi-year leasing agreements and bulk purchase deals even while vendors become more resistant to them.
Three-year replacement cycles are being extended, prompting purchasers to make better buying decisions in the first place, and canny buyers should already be auditing what roles need what kind of machine. Does every computer need to be AI-ready? Probably not, so it’s important not to over-spec the whole fleet.
Many purchasers will likely be investing more in Macs as they seek to diversify vendor exposure, while total cost of ownership over time is becoming a far more significant concern than before. It really matters that Macs are cheaper to run over time than PCs, particularly when costs have become so unpredictable. The same logic applies to tablets and smartphones, too.
None of these steps take the problem away. But sensible decision making now could help manage what is likely to be a highly uncertain period in IT purchasing, reiterating the need for resilience, so anticipated price shocks don’t blow your budgets apart.
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