You’ve likely heard of the RAMpocalypse. You might have even heard the term RAMageddon. Either way, anything with RAM stuffed in it already commands a higher price than it a) should and b) used to. Even if it hasn’t touched the South African market yet. The problem has been lurking since 2023, with the latter half of 2025 having the worst indicators of pending price pain.
A technology price increase became even more apparent at this year’s CES. The major focus of the event wasn’t on the usual suspects. Instead, there was a range of quirky products front and centre. They all have something in common — they don’t need the RAM that computing devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and data centres are gobbling up.
Pricing for the everyday tech we’re all used to hasn’t escalated in South Africa yet. We’ll likely see the first changes as soon as this month, when Samsung’s newest mobile devices become official in the country. It doesn’t really matter when it lands in SA, however. It’s already too late.
The price of speed
Most of the world’s technology — components, entire devices, a surprising number of inexpensive (by which we mean government-subsidised) cars — originates in China. That country has the shortest supply chain and, consequently, the cheapest tech on the planet. When prices are increasing there, that’s when you know how bad things are about to get. Well, guess what?
Major Chinese brands and manufacturers for common items have already raised or are raising prices for their products on their home turf. Oppo and OnePlus jacked up pricing on 16 March. Vivo shortly followed suit. Reasons, when given, have laid blame on “rising costs of several key mobile phone components, including high-speed storage hardware.”
Other sectors of the industry are also about to be slammed against a wall. Taiwan’s MSI will increase pricing across its range by 15% and 30% in a bid to keep things affordable for the company. Much of the company’s lineup, especially its gaming units, uses the same RAM and GPU tech that drives the current AI industry. Anyone who uses similar components will probably perform similar costing surgery in stores. Probably.
Spreading the love
Major price deviation has mostly been confined to China’s market for now, but that isn’t going to last. Samsung’s product lineup is about to drop. Folks have been warning for weeks that, despite the company being incredibly popular, its mobile unit could face profitability problems in 2026. The major question is how those problems will be passed on to its customers.
Samsung and every other company that produces tech have a few avenues available in the face of a RAM shortage. The one that benefits customers most is that companies — Microsoft, Sony, Acer, [insert your tech favourite here] — simply eat the cost. That choice would retain the most goodwill and sustain brand loyalty far better than any other. But that would assume that brands work on behalf of their customers. If you really believe that, I’ve got a small truckload of RTX 5090 GPUs to sell you. Cheap. Promise.
It’s all about the bottom line, and that’s why companies are likely to let their customers absorb the costs. The tricky bit will be deciding on the size of the increase. Go too high and, excellent hardware or not, folks aren’t going to buy. That’s a bigger disaster than absorbing the scarcity increase for any company. Can’t make a profit if nobody is buying, after all. While prices are set to go up, they probably won’t sting quite so much. You’ve still got to be convinced to pick up that annual upgrade.
There’s a third avenue companies are investigating. When one component gets more expensive, there’s always shrinkflation to fall back on. If RAM is too pricey, scaling back on quality in other areas can keep the shopping cart total static. Some companies will choose this route if the cost-benefit analysis suggests they’ll keep more customers.
Return of the bug?
The last time something like this happened… wasn’t all that long ago. You might remember making sourdough in the heady weeks before you realised that nothing matters and you don’t have to shower any more. I’m referring to COVID’s global shutdown, which hammered the tech world with a different kind of component shortage. TSMC made a ton of money from the shortage. Nvidia will do the same.
Other companies? Some downscaled their products. Others were simply harder to find (and eventually saw price increases). Customers, folks like you and me, either paid more, did without, or waited for the storm to pass. It did, more or less. But during the COVID shutdown, the world changed more than it otherwise might have.
New innovations popped up. Here in South Africa, grocery stores switched to app-based shopping. That change has stuck around. Medical care leapt forward — not technologically, but in terms of infrastructure. You don’t have to leave your home to see a doctor every single time. Streaming entertainment exploded. Okay, now it’s imploding, but it was doing rather well for a while there.
It’s almost impossible to predict what will crop up this time around, forced into people by component scarcity. Perhaps we can expect tech to force a deeper drive toward the data centre infrastructure that’s consuming all the RAM. It’s certainly more possible to launch devices that require less hardware while sourcing computing over an internet connection than it has ever been. You don’t need much RAM when someone else is doing all of the thinking for you. Whether that’s a good thing remains to be seen.
