'Get used to it,' says Lenovo as it expects high memory prices to remain the norm until at least 2030

At the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Lenovo executive director Martin Hiegl delivered what was intended as a joke but landed like a gut punch. When asked about the memory price outlook, he told the room that prices will "never" come back down to where they were before the crisis. The laughter that followed from the audience was probably nervous.

To be fair, Lenovo and ComputerBase (who first reported the comments) were clear that "never" is relative. Hiegl was really talking about the next five or more years, with prices expected to remain structurally higher through 2030 and beyond. Still, the underlying analysis is dead serious, and that leaves us worried.

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According to Lenovo's presentation, DRAM and NAND began their rapid climb in late Q3 2025, and have since hit levels the industry itself did not see coming. Even with continued capacity expansion by major manufacturers, prices are highly unlikely to return to early-2025 levels.

The root cause is well-documented by now. AI datacenters have consumed manufacturing capacity at a pace that leaves consumer products at the back of the queue. Micron has said the situation is out of its hands and cannot fulfill demand even for its strategic, top-tier customers, while Samsung and SK Hynix have made similar statements. We already covered how Micron locked in record-high prices with major customers through 2030, which tells you everything about where this is heading.

Moreover, SK Hynix is expected to fast-forward its original 2040-plus fab roadmap to 2030-plus, aiming to triple memory output by that timeframe. Lenovo cautioned that this may still not be enough to close the supply-demand gap. The long and short of it is that memory and NAND shortages are expected to last at least through the end of the decade.

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The impact of this "RAMageddon," as Lenovo called it, is spreading across everything. DRAM prices surged by up to 89% in Q2 2026 alone, with new fab capacity not expected to meaningfully close the gap before 2028. We saw its results in Xbox taking its third console price hike since 2025, with Microsoft warning that prices could double again by fall 2027. We also saw it when Apple raised prices across its Mac and iPad lineups, with Tim Cook calling the situation unsustainable.

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For consumers, this means PCs, phones, consoles, and SSDs are all going to cost more. We already noted its devastating effects on the Steam Machine, which was supposed to cost around $750. Whether the new fabs SK Hynix is rushing online will eventually stabilize things is an open question, but Lenovo's answer, even if partly tongue-in-cheek, is to not count on it.