How rising memory prices may be ‘problem’ for investors of Apple, HP, Dell and others

Investors in Apple, HP, Dell and other major hardware manufacturers may be worried about the rising memory prices. The increase in the cost of memory and storage components is reportedly putting pressure on hardware makers as higher expenses risk hurting margins and profits. The massive demand for memory has led to what IDC calls “an unprecedented memory chip shortage,” which the analytics company sees as a “crisis” for device makers, as a lack of supply drives sky-high chip prices. A report claims that this trend is unlikely to ease anytime soon.

In a December 2025 report, IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo wrote, “For an industry that has long been characterised by boom-and-bust cycles, this time is different. This is not just a cyclical shortage driven by a mismatch in supply and demand, but a potentially permanent, strategic reallocation of the world's silicon wafer capacity.”

How rising memory prices affect Apple, HP, Dell and others

Memory can account for 10% to 20% of material costs in consumer-facing hardware like smartphones, according to Jeronimo. Last week, Hedgeye Risk Management said it had “less conviction” in Apple as the memory issue became more worrying.

The effects for PC makers are expected to be even worse. In November, HP's profit outlook missed expectations, and during its conference call, company executives estimated that higher memory costs would reduce its 2026 adjusted earnings per share by 30 cents.

HP is “the most exposed name in our coverage to secular pressures on PC margins and demand,” Goldman Sachs analyst Katherine Murphy wrote in a note to clients earlier this week. She expects increased pricing actions to offset higher input costs, such as memory chips, to have a “material impact” on PC purchases by lower-end consumers, where HP has more exposure than Dell, in the second half of 2026.

The general estimate for HP's 2026 net earnings per share has been cut by 7.1% over the past month, according to Bloomberg data. Dell also noted the impact of rising memory prices in its results, though its estimates have held up better as the company's server business sees strong demand amid the AI buildout.

Paul Meeks, managing director and head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets told Bloomberg: “Over the next two years, the rise in the cost of memory components will be so much that it will even ding a company the size of Apple. The good news is that memory prices are cyclical, but there's so much scarcity in supply that I don't expect a reversion back in the other direction anytime soon.”

According to a Bloomberg report, Apple shares rose just 8.6% in 2025, which was the company’s worst performance since 2022, and are down 4.2% to start this year, making them among the 20 weakest stocks in the Nasdaq 100 Index. Meanwhile, HP shares recently closed at their lowest level since November 2020 after losing nearly a third of their value in 2025 and dropping another 6.8% in the early days of 2026.

On the other hand, Dell Technologies Inc. has fallen 26% since its October all-time high. More recently, Apple shares rose 0.1%, while HP shares fell 0.3%. Dell rose 1.7%, helped by TSMC results, which boosted gains in AI-related names.

Rising memory prices may also be a risk for chipmakers that provide semiconductors for smartphones, as noted in recent downgrades of Qualcomm by Mizuho Securities and Arm Holdings Plc by Bank of America.

Last week, results from Samsung Electronics Co. showed that average selling prices for dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, chips jumped more than 30% from one quarter to the next. To compare, non-volatile flash memory, or NAND, chips rose about 20%. The higher prices, which are expected to continue throughout 2026, if not longer, helped Samsung's profits more than triple.


In a statement to Bloomberg, Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital, which has $9.1 billion in assets and runs an exchange-traded fund dedicated to AI infrastructure, said, “They’re [Apple, HP, Dell and others] in a tough position. They basically have two options: They can take a hit to margins, which the market won’t like. Or they can raise prices to offset the higher memory costs, running the risk of hurting demand.”

“So long as memory prices stay high, and we expect prices to stay high for a while given the AI demand, the market could continue punishing them,” Thummel added. Among the group, he's only positive on Dell, as growth in its server business offsets the memory headwind.

To compare, memory and storage companies have shot ahead in 2026, with Sandisk, Western Digital, Micron and Seagate Technology Holdings Plc building on their 2025 rallies. These companies have benefited from the price surge, becoming some of the market’s top-performing stocks over the past year. Sandisk is leading the S&P 500 to start the year, up about 75%, with Western Digital and Micron among the index's top 20 performers.