Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen predicts global PC prices will peak in mid-2027 before gradually declining in the second half of the year, directly challenging industry warnings that hardware shortages and elevated costs could persist through 2030.
For consumers and enterprise buyers watching component expenses climb month after month, the hardware market has felt stuck in an indefinite cycle of inflation. Surging demand from artificial intelligence data center buildouts has consumed available memory supply and pushed dynamic random-access memory prices up roughly fivefold since last year. That acute squeeze has rippled outward, inflating the cost of personal computers, smartphones, graphics cards, game consoles, and the CPUs and motherboards built around them.
While executives across the semiconductor industry warn that tight supply and high prices will stubbornly hold firm, Acer’s leadership offers a starkly contrasting outlook. Component costs are still climbing in the near term, but the underlying supply constraints driving those hikes are beginning to dissolve.
Acer’s Contrasting Timeline for Component Costs and Relief
Speaking at a technology forum in Taiwan, Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen argued that acute supply shortages across the broader memory market have largely vanished. He pointed out that only high-end components—such as the fastest DDR5 modules including LPDDR5X-9600 and specialized processors like Nvidia’s N1 and N1X chips—remain genuinely constrained.
Older hardware tells an entirely different story. According to Biggo, Chen noted that legacy DDR4 memory faces a market of many sellers, few buyers
as the industry completes its transition to newer platform standards.
Despite this stabilization in supply, consumer-facing hardware costs will not drop immediately. Because component pricing lags finished device pricing by several months, Acer expects average selling prices for personal computers to rise by another 5% to 20% in the fourth quarter of 2026. Prices are expected to plateau through the first half of 2027 before reaching a peak around mid-year and finally starting a gradual descent.
Clashing Views Across the Semiconductor Industry
Chen’s optimistic schedule puts him at direct odds with leadership teams at several major semiconductor and memory manufacturing firms, who view the current pricing environment as a long-term reality.
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra predicted earlier this year that tight supply conditions would persist well beyond 2027. SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung projected that shortages would peak in 2027 and that overall supply would remain restricted through 2030. Adata chairman Chen Li-bai issued an even more conservative forecast, suggesting that elevated DRAM prices could endure for a full decade.
These bleak projections are largely anchored in relentless artificial intelligence infrastructure demand. Hyperscale cloud providers continue to absorb massive quantities of high-bandwidth memory, while new fabrication facilities currently under construction are not slated to begin high-volume production until the next decade.
Chen, however, dismissed those extended timelines as self-serving market messaging designed to protect corporate profitability. He suggested that memory producers have a clear commercial incentive to maintain a narrative of scarcity.
Wccftech noted that Chen considers it impossible for true memory shortages to sustain themselves for another four years given the relentless pace of global fab expansions.
The Rise of Chinese Manufacturing Capacity
A critical pillar of Acer’s bullish forecast is the rapid expansion of alternative manufacturing capacity in China, which Chen characterized as acting as price destroyers in the global market.
China’s largest DRAM producer, CXMT, has initiated mass production of its fifth-generation DRAM platform. This new architecture increases chip output per silicon wafer by at least 50% compared to preceding designs and includes production lines for two 24Gb LPDDR5X products. Major PC brands including Acer, HP, and Asus have already begun utilizing CXMT chips in select hardware offerings, while specific Lenovo laptop configurations sold in Germany incorporate solid-state drives manufactured by YMTC.
This influx of competitively priced components has created significant apprehension among established market incumbents. Leadership at major memory houses has previously expressed concern over the long-term competitive pressure posed by these expanding regional suppliers.
Divergent Analyst Outlooks and Market Realities
Independent market analysts maintain a more cautious stance than Acer’s executive leadership.
External analysts surveyed by Mashable reinforce the view that relief will take time to materialize across retail channels.
“The memory supply will remain tight from a device’s perspective for the remainder of 2026 and well into 2027,”
Jitesh Ubrani, analyst director with the International Data Corporation
Adding further complexity to the hardware market, component inflation is not limited exclusively to memory chips. Manufacturers report ongoing cost pressures across printed circuit boards, fiberglass cloth used in motherboards, and foundational silicon processing, pointing to a complex assembly of cost factors that will dictate whether retail computer prices truly break their upward trajectory next year.