You may have heard the term “contraction“It is used for an increasing number of grocery products, such as cereal costing more every year even though there is less Captain Crunch in the box. Similarly, by 2026, everything from phones to PC components to boutique gaming products will not only be more expensive, but they will also be getting worse.
Major semiconductor companies that create the vast majority of memory components include companies like SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron. All three have adjusted their businesses to manufacture the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) needed to build AI data centers; Those same large technology-backed construction projects have residents in arms in small towns in the USA
You can see the ravages of inflationary contraction on major smartphone brands as big as Google. The semi-reliable Telegram leaker mystical leaks (through PhoneSand) released a variety of alleged specifications for the upcoming Pixel 11 line. There don’t appear to be any great features, even though the upcoming Pixel 11 Pro XL could receive a new range of camera sensors. At the same time, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold may drop to 12GB of RAM. They are 4 GB less than the 16 GB of the previous one Pixel 10 Pro foldable. Google will have a hard time justifying the new Fold if it costs the same or more than the 2025 model.
Those upcoming Pixel phones may also lose their coveted thermometer feature and replace it with a small RGB LED array similar to the nothing phone 3 Glyph matrix. Google’s latest mid-range phone, the Pixel 10a—offered no discernible improvement over the Pixel 9a for the same price of $500.
The problem is that technology companies have fewer options than ever. They can hurt performance or increase prices. Framework, the maker of repairable boutique laptops, has It raised the prices of its RAM modules. over and over again over the last few months. it’s new Framework 13 Pro Laptop It’s one of the most expensive yet, largely thanks to the skyrocketing price of LPDDR5X RAM and M.2 SSDs. Nvidia recently launched a 12GB VRAM version of its RTX 5070 mobile GPU for laptops. While on paper it seemed like a way to deliver better graphics performance on lower-end GPUs, the 5070 12GB module in a Laptop frame 16 It costs $1,200. That’s $500 more than the 8GB module.
Motorola has chosen to raise prices and limit memory. The new 2026 version of the Razr foldable phones now costs $800, up from $700 for the previous model. model 2025. It now starts with 128GB of storage instead of 256GB. The phone is still one of the best foldable deals for American buyers, but you might be better off looking for an older, cheaper model. The Razr+ 2026 features the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chip that the 2025 had last year. At the very least, Motorola upgraded the Razer+’s battery from a 4,000 mAh capacity to 4,500 mAh. But they’re essentially the same phones as last year, albeit with a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera instead of a 2x telephoto lens.
Last October, slim PlayStation 5 models saw your system storage slide from 1TB to 825GB. Memory costs are strangling smaller companies even more than larger brands. AYN, the manufacturer of specialized retro wearables, announced last month that it had downgraded the storage specs of the beloved AYN Thor dual-screen handheld. It now uses standard UFS 3.1 storage, with read and write speeds much slower than UFS 4.0. The portable device maker then added another 16GB RAM option and increased the cost of the maximum 1TB storage configuration to $550.
PC components are also lowering their specifications to keep prices down. Taiwanese PC component maker ASRock worked with DRAM manufacturers to develop your own variety of “affordable” DUDIMM DDR5 modules. Simply put, this variety of RAM sticks offer half the bandwidth and density of your standard DDR5 memory stick. These components will supposedly come with Intel’s 600, 700, and 800 series chipsets, according to Intel’s CEO of its enthusiast channel, Robert Hallock.
Korean technology news outlet the electric reported that the next generation of RAM standard, DDR6, is now fully in development by the three major RAM manufacturers. The new standard promises faster data transfer speeds of up to 8.4 Gbps. We probably won’t see the skin or the hair of DDR6 until 2028 at the earliest. At the same time, these companies are telling consumers RAM prices will not drop for another two years or more. And in that time, our devices will not only get more expensive, they will get worse.
No one is safe, not even Apple. Last week, Apple quietly discontinued its old $600 entry-level model by 2024. mac mini with its 256 GB memory specification. Now, Apple’s tiny desktop costs $800 and you should opt for the 512GB version. In a recent earnings call, outgoing CEO Tim Cook said there was a chip shortage affecting “several Mac models.” It looks like we’ll have to take more and more abuse long before we see faster memory that most couldn’t afford.
