- The current DRAM shortage will also affect televisions
- Expect the cheapest TVs to get price increases first
- No signs the shortage will end anytime soon
Samsung says it cannot rule out price increases on new TVs due to the ongoing shortage of memory chips. Speaking to PakGazette, TM co-CEO Roh said of the shortage: “As this situation is unprecedented, no company is immune to its impact.” He added that the shortage affected everything from mobile phones to consumer electronics, not only televisions but also household appliances.
Samsung is the world’s number one TV maker, so it has purchasing power that its smaller rivals lack; Like other big players like Apple, it locks in supply months and years in advance, so it’s less subject to short-term problems.
However, Roh admitted that some impact on prices was “inevitable” as the shortage continues. So if you’re thinking about buying one of the best TVs, especially in the entry-level or mid-range part of the market, you might want to make the decision sooner rather than later.
What is causing the memory chip shortage?
As we reported in December 2025, there are multiple factors contributing to a serious memory chip shortage. Almost all memory in modern systems and many SSDs use DRAM chips, and demand was already growing when the AI boom began.
AI training takes tons of memory, and whenever high demand meets limited capacity, prices start to skyrocket, just like they did when COVID caused chip factories to close or when crypto miners started hoovering up all the graphics cards. And because there is so much money wasted on AI, chipmakers are shifting their focus to concentrate on AI’s very hungry caterpillars, data centers.
As IDC explained in December 2025: “Rather than expanding conventional DRAM and NAND used in smartphones, PCs, and other consumer electronics, major memory manufacturers have shifted production toward memory used in AI data centers, such as high-capacity, high-bandwidth (HBM) DDR5. This has restricted the supply of general-purpose memory modules and raised prices across the board.”
IDC continues: “AI servers and enterprise environments require much more memory per system than consumer devices, so AI development is absorbing a disproportionate share of global capacity and creating shortages…this is not just a cyclical shortage driven by a mismatch in supply and demand, but a potentially permanent strategic reallocation of global silicon wafer capacity.”
This is likely to seriously impact the smartphone market in 2026 and beyond, because memory accounts for up to 20% of the material cost of a mid-range phone and 10-15% of a flagship phone. As a result, we are already seeing smartphone specifications going backwards.
The effect on TVs is likely to be less dramatic than on devices like PCs and smartphones because they use less RAM for both memory and storage; That RAM also represents a much smaller proportion of the total component cost, because the panel is the most expensive component by a huge margin.
That said, profit margins in the TV business are already exceptionally thin, so even the biggest brands don’t have much room to maneuver if component costs rise significantly. And that’s particularly true at the more affordable end of the market, where margins are tighter. As the shortage continues, the first price increases on cheaper TVs are likely to occur.
The best televisions for all budgets
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