Taiwan's Compal warns rising memory prices to impact industry into 2027

By Wen-Yee Lee

TAIPEI, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Taiwan's Compal, a contract manufacturer for notebook and personal computers, ​said surging memory prices would continue into ‌2027 and have a significant impact on the industry.

The company said ‌it expected global notebook and personal computer shipments to fall by a low-single-digit percentage in 2026.

“We believe the total market will be impacted for sure,” Chief Executive Officer ⁠Anthony Peter Bonadero ‌said, adding Compal's own notebook and PC business was expected to be flat or ‍see slight growth, supported by its customer mix.

"It's a true super cycle (in memory chips) that we haven't really seen," said ​Bonadero.

The world's top three memory chip producers - Samsung ‌Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron - have said in recent months that they are struggling to keep up with demand, as a boom in artificial intelligence data center rollouts has tightened supply of memory chips.

"We expect to ⁠see more of what we ​saw towards the end of '25 ​with pricing volatility in the memory space, with the big three memory manufacturers prioritizing AI ‍server high-bandwidth-memory (HBM)," Bonadero ⁠said.

Memory chips typically account for about 15% to 18% of a PC's materials cost, but the ⁠share could now rise to as much as 35% to 40%, ‌he said.

(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee. Editing by ‌Muralikumar Anantharaman and Mark Potter)