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Within a span of five hours Thursday, Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. hiked the prices for such popular products as Xbox video-game consoles, Macs and iPads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Both companies blamed an unprecedented shortage of memory chips driven by the artificial intelligence boom. And despite high-profile efforts to increase supply, the crunch and its impact on consumer prices won\u2019t end anytime soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On Monday, Samsung Electronics<\/a> Co. and SK Hynix Inc. are expected to announce new chip manufacturing investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to South Korean media reports. The Samsung Group, of which Samsung Electronics is a part, is set to unveil a 1,000 trillion won ($651 billion) spending package over the next decade, in what would be the largest such plan in the country\u2019s history, Maeil Business Newspaper reported Friday. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n And yet, industry executives warn the shortage will persist for years, as new data centers vacuum up chips. Micron Technology Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said Wednesday that while chip availability may improve in 2028, there is \u201cno line of sight\u201d to when supply will catch up with demand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That means chip prices will likely keep rising, forcing consumers to pay more for laptops, phones and other devices. Already, the price of a DDR5 chip typically used in personal computers has increased more than fourfold in the last year, according to data from inSpectrum Tech Inc.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWith tight supply and demand likely lingering into 2028 at this point, pricing is unlikely to decline through 2027,\u201d said analyst Jake Silverman with Bloomberg Intelligence. \u201cConsumer device prices may have to keep increasing, albeit at more moderate rates just to sustain healthy product margins.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The AI infrastructure boom led by Nvidia <\/a>Corp.\u2019s graphics processing unit chips has upturned the memory market. The supply crunch has been exacerbated by the fact that the industry didn\u2019t see the boom coming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n