HP is raising prices after the memory shortage drove costs up by 100% quarter over quarter.
“We are increasing prices currently,” HP CFO Karen Parkhill said in a Tuesday earnings call for fiscal Q1. “We have seen memory costs increase roughly 100% sequentially, and we do forecast that to further increase as we move into the fiscal year.”
HP executives explained that memory, including DDR RAM and storage, previously accounted for 15% to 18% of the total cost of a PC, also known as the bill of materials. But due to the shortage, the company now estimates memory components will make up 35% of the bill of materials for this year, Parkhill said.
The news is a worrying sign, as HP previously indicated it would raise prices in May during the second half of the fiscal year. Framework Computer, another vendor, also recently had to raise prices twice in the past few weeks after it reported that RAM costs had more than doubled. Meanwhile, Valve has stopped selling the Steam Deck due to the ongoing memory crunch.
Along with price increases, HP has also been pivoting toward selling more premium devices across both consumer and commercial categories. The good news is that the company has “secured long-term agreements” for memory for this fiscal year. So it doesn’t look like HP will run out of components anytime soon. Data from PCPartPicker shows that pricing for DDR RAM, while sky-high, has stabilized in recent weeks.
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However, HP’s interim CEO, Bruce Broussard, still noted: “We expect this volatility to remain throughout fiscal ’26 and likely into fiscal ’27.”
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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