Electronics prices are starting to soar, adding to the stress consumers are facing

New Economic Realities // June 30, 2026 Electronics prices are starting to soar, adding to the stress consumers are facing By Mitchell Parton Ivy Liu Consumers may not want to upgrade their laptops, tablets or game consoles anytime soon. Many major electronics brands have recently announced significant price hikes on their products.

Apple this month raised prices on MacBooks and iPads, some by as much as $300, due to price increases in memory and storage chips. The one-terabyte MacBook Pro jumped from $1,699 to $1,999, while the entry-level MacBook Neo rose from $599 to $699.

Microsoft, on the same day, announced it would raise the price of Xbox game consoles by $150-$200 in August due to memory and console storage prices, depending on the model. Nintendo also said in May the price of its Nintendo Switch 2 game console will increase in September from $449. 99 to $499. 99, blaming “changes in market conditions.”

These price hikes come as the memory chip industry lacks sufficient supply to meet demand from companies building AI data centers, according to a report from the Deutsche Bank Research Institute. “For every wafer devoted to [high-bandwidth memory] stacks for AI servers, others are unavailable for smartphones, PCs or vehicles,” the researchers wrote.

“And because the shortage will reverberate across key economic systems well beyond AI — hurting the average consumer via memory-cost inflation — memory chips have transitioned from a pure commodity to a distinctly macroeconomic variable.”

The impact of the chip shortage will be felt not only by larger electronics companies and retailers, but also by consumers and smaller manufacturers.

“Consumers will maybe look to trade down from Apple to other things, or maybe they’ll look to trade down from one brand to another,” said Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at GlobalData Retail, adding he expects others to wait to upgrade.

“The higher prices across the board just mean that demand essentially, in volume terms, is going to be a little bit more compressed than it otherwise would have been.” Consumers are already squeezed, especially given higher gas prices due to the war in Iran. Eighty-one percent of U. S.

consumers surveyed by Gartner in May and June said they were concerned about the increased cost of living. Kate Muhl, a vp and consumer data analyst for Gartner, said she expects consumers to put off big-ticket purchases like electronics for as long as they can, as they did last year in response to the new tariffs.

“We’re at the long end of all sorts of things that have been putting pressure on consumers,” Muhl said. “The idea that prices are going to go up on something is not a shock to people.” Still, there’s a risk in how brands may position these price increases.

Muhl said that tying these increases to AI — rather than other external factors such as tariffs or the war in Iran — could lead to more negative consumer reaction to price hikes.

The firm’s research has shown that a growing segment of consumers has a negative perception of AI, and tying price increases to AI could give them another reason to dislike the disruption it causes. The share of people who declined to acknowledge or participate in generative AI grew from 13% in 2023 to 16% in 2025, according to a separate Gartner survey.

“In a world where we look at how these big factors start to weigh in on how consumers perceive what is going into price, that one is primed to come into the conversation,” Muhl said. “That would not be good for the industry.”

Still, Muhl said she expects some consumers to continue buying personal electronics from companies like Apple or Microsoft because of their existing connection to the brand. Forty percent of consumers surveyed by Gartner in 2025 said they would pay more for a certain brand of product, electronics or otherwise.

Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said on the company’s last earnings call in May that customers are still spending, but are focused on value and attracted to sales moments. “While customers continue to be thoughtful about big-ticket purchases, they are willing to spend on high price point products when they need to or when there is technology innovation,” she said.

Meanwhile, smaller electronics brands continue to get squeezed. Matthew Hassett, founder and CEO of Loftie, which sells smart alarm clocks, said the prices of the SD cards his company uses in its clocks went up three times around March of this year.

“This has been happening for the last year or so, but it’s only starting to hit sort of the mainstream press now,” he said, because AI companies are buying up so many memory chips.

Hassett has opted not to raise prices — Loftie already had to raise prices last year because of tariffs — and now, tariffs have gone down a bit this year for his brand, which has helped