The memory shortage that has been quietly inflating the cost of your next laptop is not a passing squeeze, if ADATA’s chairman is to be believed. Chen Li-bai has said the DRAM shortage could last another 10 years, and dismissed the growing chatter about an AI bubble as premature. According to reporting relayed by Wccftech, citing Taiwan’s Commercial Times, he suggested any bubble discussion could wait until 2030, or even 2040.
Why does ADATA think the shortage will last a decade?
Chen’s argument rests on the claim that the market has badly underestimated real AI demand. ADATA is one of the larger memory makers, and Chen says the current AI cycle is only the beginning, with demand rising across servers, storage, power infrastructure, and data centres coming online worldwide. His headline line is that over the next 10 years, the world’s scarcest resources will be electricity and memory.
He is also unconvinced by the counter-argument that cloud providers leasing out spare compute signals cooling demand. Chen contends that future AI applications will expand into more business models rather than fewer, keeping pressure on components. It is worth treating this framing with some caution: it comes from a supplier with an obvious interest in a tight, high-price market, and the source set does not independently confirm the 10-year figure beyond Chen’s own remarks as reported.
Why won’t new factories fix the crunch faster?
The core problem is timing. Chen said most DRAM and NAND expansion projects are scheduled between 2028 and 2035, and that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron would expand cautiously rather than flood the market and crater their own margins. Long-term supply contracts already lock up much of what those new lines will produce.
That caution has consequences for buyers. Chen has previously warned of a 30% rise in DRAM prices and a 40% rise in NAND by Q3 2026, and other estimates have gone higher still. Lenovo has already framed elevated memory prices as the new normal, and SK Hynix’s leadership has warned the squeeze could get considerably worse before it eases, a view we covered when its boss called 2027 potentially the industry’s worst year.
What it means for laptop, phone, and PC prices
For anyone buying computing hardware, a prolonged memory shortage translates fairly directly into higher prices. DRAM and NAND sit inside laptops, desktops, smartphones, and SSDs, so sustained supply tightness feeds through to the sticker price of mid-range and high-capacity devices — and memory upgrades bought on their own.
None of the current reporting provides UAE retail pricing, so the local impact remains an implication rather than a confirmed figure. But the direction is clear enough: earlier industry views once expected NAND relief in the first half of 2026, and that horizon has since stretched well past 2028. If Chen’s decade-long timeline is even roughly right, the cheap-memory era that PC buyers took for granted is not coming back any time soon, and planning a purchase around a near-term price drop looks like a losing bet.
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