Acer CEO Jason Chen: Chinese Memory Capacity Surge Disrupts Pricing, PC Prices Won't Peak and Decline Until H2 2027
nashnova research
Acer chairman Jason Chen said Chinese memory capacity is hammering global pricing, but with the Big Three defending margins, PC prices won't start falling until H2 2027 — and the price-hike chain has already spread from memory to SSDs, PCBs, and fiberglass cloth.
Has the component shortage actually eased?
CPU shortages have largely cleared. Only a few models tied to specific Microsoft projects — such as small-core products — remain constrained.
Memory shortages are concentrated in high-end specs: LPDDR5X 9600 and models tied to Nvidia's N1 and N1X platforms. Standard DDR5 and DDR4 are not in short supply.
This means → the shortage is structural, not across-the-board. Price pressure comes from a high-end bottleneck, not a genuine industry-wide deficit.
Why are memory prices still so high?
Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — the Big Three — are deliberately holding high margins, signaling to the market that prices will not fall. Chen quoted them directly: "They keep putting out the message — let me tell you, prices won't come down until the twenties."
In plain terms = actual supply is already ample. Today's high prices reflect the Big Three's pricing strategy, not a real supply-demand gap.
Chinese memory capacity keeps coming online, undercutting the market with lower prices and directly challenging the Big Three's margin defense.
How far has the price-hike chain spread?
Price increases have rippled from memory chips to SSDs, printed circuit boards (PCBs), and even fiberglass cloth used in motherboards — downstream suppliers are piling on.
Chen's reaction was blunt: "A lot of people come and tell us prices are going up. We find it baffling — this too?"
This reflects a classic supply-chain cascade: once the source — memory — rises, every link in the chain passes the increase downstream.
When will PC prices actually come down?
Chen's forecast: PCs rise another 5% to 20% in H2 2026, plateau in H1 2027, and begin declining in H2 2027.
This means → component price hikes take months to reach end products. Consumers won't see prices turn until late 2027.
He added that component inflation has pushed up end-product prices, fueled broader inflation, and even contributed to Fed rate hikes — a situation he called "abnormal."
What is the core uncertainty?
Whether the pace of Chinese memory capacity release can break the Big Three's margin defense — that is the pivotal variable for the pricing inflection point.
Whether the turn comes in H1 2027 or H2 2027 depends on how fast Chinese capacity ramps and how the Big Three respond.
Put simply = this is a tug-of-war between Chinese low-cost capacity and the Big Three's high-margin fortress. Whoever blinks first determines where prices go.
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