Qualcomm Boss Reveals Real Reason Behind Rising Laptop and Smartphone Prices

Qualcomm has spoken out regarding the component shortages currently affecting the global technology industry. According to the company, the primary issue does not lie with chipsets, but rather with memory, which is becoming increasingly scarce as much of its production is being absorbed by data centre requirements.

“The scarcity problem is actually in memory. It is not actually about chipsets. Memory is becoming expensive and scarce because most memory is going into data centres,” said Don McGuire, Executive Vice Grand President and Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm Incorporated, at the Snapdragon Partners & Media Event Indonesia 2026 in Jakarta on Thursday (1/10/2026).

This situation has made it difficult for consumer electronics businesses, including smartphone manufacturers, to secure memory supplies. Memory is a critical component that works alongside Qualcomm processors within devices.

The scarcity has subsequently driven up memory prices. This increase in costs is putting pressure on smartphone manufacturers and has the potential to make devices even more expensive.

“Memory costs continue to rise because scarcity is also increasing. That is what is causing the economic problem and the rise in smartphone costs,” he said.

The company stated it is developing technology to make memory usage more efficient. This step is expected to reduce the short-term impact of the scarcity on customers.

The company is also preparing to implement high-performance computing (HPC) technology in the smartphones of several customers starting in early 2027. According to Snapdragon, this technology could help address memory requirement issues.

“This will start to become visible early next year when HPC truly manifests for the first time in some of our customers’ devices. That should help,” he noted.

Nevertheless, Qualcomm estimates that the memory supply issue may not begin to ease until late 2027 or early 2028. However, McGuire admitted he could not confirm whether memory prices would continue to rise.

“We hope not. What I can say is that we continue to see high demand due to the transition towards agentic AI,” he concluded.