- The ongoing DRAM shortage will also affect TVs
- Expect cheaper TVs to get price increases first
- There are no signs that the shortage will end soon
Samsung says it cannot rule out price increases on new TVs due to the ongoing shortage of memory chips. Speaking to Pakinomist, co-CEO TM Roh said of the shortfall: “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 just TVs, but also home appliances.
Samsung is the world’s largest TV manufacturer, so it has purchasing power that smaller competitors lack; like other big players like Apple, it locks in supply for months and years in advance, so it is less exposed to short-term problems.
However, Roh admitted that some impact on prices was “inevitable” as shortages persist. So if you’re considering buying one of the best TVs, especially at the entry-level or mid-range end of the market, you might want to take the plunge sooner rather than later.
What causes the memory chip shortage?
As we reported in December 2025, there are several factors contributing to a severe memory chip shortage. Almost all modern system memory and plenty of SSD drives use DRAM chips, and demand was already growing when the AI boom started.
AI training needs tons of memory, and whenever high demand meets limited capacity, prices start to skyrocket—just like they did when COVID caused chip factories to shut down, or when crypto miners started hoovering all the graphics cards. And because there is so much money sloshing around in AI, chipmakers are shifting their focus to concentrate on the Very Hungry Caterpillars of AI, the data centers.
As IDC explained in December 2025: “Instead of 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-bandwidth (HBM) and high-capacity DDR5. This has limited the supply of general-purpose memory modules and cards.”
IDC continues: “AI servers and enterprise environments require far more memory per system than consumer devices, so AI deployment is drawing a disproportionate share of global capacity and creating shortages… this is not just a cyclical shortage driven by a supply-demand mismatch, but a potentially permanent, strategic reallocation of the world’s silicon wafer capacity.”
It is likely to seriously affect the smartphone market in 2026 and beyond, because memory accounts for as much as 20% of the material cost of a mid-range phone and 10-15% of a flagship. We’re already seeing smartphone specs go backwards as a result.
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 is also a much smaller proportion of the total component cost because the panel is the most expensive component by a huge margin.
That said, margins in the TV business are already unusually thin, so even the biggest brands don’t have much wiggle room if component costs rise significantly. And this applies especially at the more affordable end of the market, where the margins are thinnest. As shortages continue, cheaper TVs are where the first price increases are likely to bite.
The best TVs for all budgets
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