Global Chip Crunch Pushes Up Laptop Prices As Brands Scale Back On RAM

Recent laptop launches feature higher price tags due to a phenomenon known as RAMageddon, which has halted efforts to make everyday devices cheaper. The crisis stems from the artificial intelligence gold rush, driving the expansion of data centres and creating a shortage of memory chips and other critical components that pushes up electronics prices. Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Compute and Gaming at Qualcomm Technologies Inc, states that predicting when the memory shortage will end remains difficult, noting that current laptop pricing depends largely on when OEMs bought the memory and at what price. Brands are trying to figure out how to bring device prices down, such as choosing LCD displays instead of OLED. In India, the budget laptop segment has been hit hard by the global shortage, with multiple PC brands saying that memory chips are now their most expensive component. Companies like Apple and Dell have raised laptop prices in India, while others cut down on RAM by launching models with just 8 GB of memory and passing higher costs to consumers. More companies are launching laptops priced at Rs 80,000 and above, targeting a premium segment, while many laptops launched at higher prices once fell into the entry-level category. Despite the crisis, Qualcomm is targeting ultra-affordable laptops powered by its Snapdragon C processor, announced in June, with HP, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo among the makers. While it remains unclear if the $300, or approximately Rs 28,272, price target for Snapdragon C laptops can be maintained amid the crisis, they could still be cheaper than Apple's MacBook Neo and Windows laptops powered by Intel Wild Lake processors. Kedar notes that the launch of Snapdragon C laptops in India is imminent. Qualcomm also announced new versions of Microsoft's 12-inch Surface Pro and 13-inch Surface Laptop running Snapdragon X2 Elite chips at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii. The company announced Linux support for its newest chips, with Ubuntu planning to support Snapdragon X2 devices early next year, alongside Google's new line of AI-powered laptops, Googlebooks, built on Android and powered by Snapdragon X Elite chips. Kedar highlighted a growing consumer demand for laptops with previous-generation Snapdragon processors, specifically X Elite and X Plus Gen1 laptops with higher RAM configurations. New notebooks also feature improved webcams that use image signal processing on Snapdragon X2 Elite chips to improve video call quality by routing image processing through a dedicated camera engine and using MIPI interfaces instead of traditional USB-based connections.