Apple And Team Group Reveal When The Memory Crisis Will Hit Peak Pain

If you thought the punishing price increases on PC components, smartphones, and consumer hardware in general would ease up anytime soon, prepare for another gut punch. As bad as it has been, the worst is yet to come, which is starting to sound like a familiar refrain. That's the warning coming from Team Group, which expects the ongoing memory supply crunch to reach its most painful stretch between now and the middle of 2027. Meanwhile, Apple is also sounding a similar alarm about rising memory costs.

Both companies addressed the state of the memory market during separate earnings calls to discuss each one's latest earnings. Starting with Team Group, company CEO Chen Ching-wen put a time stamp on when exactly he anticipates the memory crunch being its most brutal, saying there is "no downward price trend whatsoever" right now.

According to Ching-wen, the period from the fourth quarter of 2026 (right now, essentially) through the end of the first half of 2027 will see the shortage at its worst, to the point where customers will find that "even money can't buy goods."

Team Group also expects memory prices to keep climbing through early 2027, with some products potentially seeing quarterly increases of 30% to 40%. Once we get through the worst of the shortage, it still will not be easy sledding. Instead, the company anticipates long-sought relief not coming until at least the second half of 2028 or even further, with Ching-wen commenting, "How can prices fall when there's nothing left?," according to BigGo Finance.

Apple offered another perspective during its own November 2 earnings call. John Ternus replaced Tim Cook as CEO of Apple in September, and the latest earnings report is the first one issued with him at the helm. His tenure is off to a strong start with Apple posting record quarterly revenue of $114.5 billion, which is a 12% year-over-year increase. However, there are factors that could impact Apple's bottom line once Ternus has had a full quarter under his belt.

"Let me give you an overall view on memory. What we're seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented. And as we said earlier in the September quarter, we did see higher memory costs as compared to the June quarter, which were partly offset by the benefit of carrying inventory and lower costs on certain non-memory components," Ternus stated during an earnings call.

Ternus went on to say that Apple expects "even higher memory costs" in the current quarter, and that they will continue to increase into 2027, which aligns with Team Group's assessment of the market.

"So as you know, we changed the price on many of our products, including Mac and iPad at the end of June and iPhone in September, and these price increases provided some offset," Ternus added.

Indeed, for consumers, the implications extend beyond the price of a standalone DDR5 memory kit. More expensive DRAM and NAND flash can push up the cost of laptops, desktops, smartphones, storage devices, game consoles, and a plethora of other devices. Likewise, the ongoing memory shortage could also limit product availability, as we've seen with systems like the PlayStation 5 Pro.