If new equipment is declining in quality and increasing in price, it’s time to consider the second-life marketplace, says Billy MacInnes
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It seems like only a few weeks ago (probably because it was) that I was writing about IDC’s dire warnings of a global memory shortage that would affect the price and specification of PCs and smartphones.
IDC argued that “just as the [PC] industry is seeing a need to add more RAM, it has become prohibitively expensive to do so, even if they can get supply. This will result in higher prices, lower margins, or a potential downmix in the amount of RAM in new systems at the worst possible time for this to occur.”
And just a week ago, I referred to a story that memory shortages were prompting vendors like HPE and Cisco to rewrite their Ts&Cs to allow prices to be adjusted between the order and shipment date. As I noted, this raised some interesting questions about the role of the channel partner. What effect would it have on the channel partner’s relationship with the customer if the vendor could undermine any agreement at the very last minute? And what happens to the trusted adviser when the customer can’t even trust the adviser on something as basic as price?
This week, anyone harbouring any lingering doubt about the current state of play was swiftly disabused of that notion when HP Inc CFO Karen Parkhill (pictured) revealed that memory chip prices were up about 100% sequentially from the vendor’s Q1 to Q2. For context, that’s a jump in prices from the first quarter ending 31 January 2026 and the second quarter starting 1 February 2026. She added that memory prices were expected to increase further and HP did not anticipate they would reach their peak by the end of its second quarter.
The company also revealed the surge in prices meant memory now accounted for 35% of the total cost of a PC, up from 15-18% in the first quarter.
Let’s just stop a moment to think about that for a second. Assuming a laptop costs around €900, the cost of the memory would be €315 this quarter. Last quarter, it would be €157 and the overall price of the laptop would have been €743. Does that seem ever so slightly insane to you?
Roadmaps to nowhere
One of the potential fixes being proposed is to freeze entry-level memory configurations in new machines at 8GB instead of upgrading to 16GB, but taking things back a step like that risks reducing the lifespan of any ‘new’ PC. Also, as no one is sure how long the current situation of concentrating manufacturing capacity on high-margin memory solutions to support AI will last, it is sure to have a knock-on effect on product roadmaps if, for example, it delays memory upgrades from 16GB to 32GB.
One possible fix is to opt for a refurbished machine as an alternative. After all, if new machines become even more expensive, the attraction of older models becomes more pronounced. You can either buy an older PC or laptop with 8GB which is cheaper than a newer entry-level 8GB version or get an older machine with the heftier 16GB of RAM instead, quite possibly for a lower price too. Ironically, the older machine may well have a longer lifespan than the newer 8GB model.
In this light, it is interesting to note research from Context which says that “Europe’s PC market is undergoing a structural reset, and refurbished devices are at the centre of it”.
According to the market intelligence firm, sales of refurbished devices through distribution rose 7% year-on-year in Q4 2025 across the five biggest markets in Europe. “Our latest analysis shows second-life computing moving decisively into the mainstream”, said ESG specialist Jacky Chang. “As price pressure, constrained supply and sustainability priorities converge, retailers face a narrow window to recalibrate their strategies.”
Another way to mitigate the effects of the memory shortage on laptops and PCs, at least until we know just how long they might endure, would be to seek to delay any technological advancements that require 16GB or more of RAM or find some way to make them work with lower memory requirements.
Of course, the more drastic course of action would be to force customers to pay more. This might work but if vendors are honest about why prices are going up, customers might not be quite so willing to fork out significantly more for a laptop or PC just to feed AI’s insatiable appetite. I wouldn’t.
This is going to be an even harder sell if people aren’t convinced there is a compelling reason to upgrade their computers for the AI future when it arrives. After all, many people are already struggling to rationalise the unimaginable, unsustainable resources being ploughed into AI.
There’s something almost comical about the upgrade of computers being hobbled to service the demands of AI and, as a consequence, not being advanced enough to fully exploit whatever benefits AI might bring.