Acer's chairman expects PC prices to climb another 5-20%
Jason Chen says the memory shortage is not the one-way crisis the market keeps describing, but he still expects PC prices to rise 5-20% this quarter and to peak around the middle of 2027.
Acer's chairman has put a number on the next round of PC price rises. Jason Chen told a media interview at the Wangdao Management and AI International Forum on 19 September that end-market PC prices are likely to climb between 5 and 20 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the size of the increase depending on how much memory a given machine ships with.
He expects PC average selling prices to peak around the middle of 2027 and then ease, with component costs coming down as new semiconductor capacity is brought online and Chinese suppliers expand output. On that reading, end-market prices could start falling again before the end of 2027.
The shortage is narrower than the headlines
Chen's more interesting claim is about what is actually short. He describes the memory market as being in a period of high-level volatility and chaos rather than a one-way climb, with some sellers quoting aggressive high prices while others are urgently offering low ones. DDR4 and standard DDR5 supply, he says, is quite ample, with DDR4 even showing signs of price declines, and CPU supply is largely normal.
The genuine shortages, in his account, are confined to high-end parts tied to the newest architectures, such as the components needed for next-generation AI PC platforms. Those models carry higher unit prices and represent a small share of shipments, so their impact on the wider market is limited. "Supply keeps coming out, so right now there are many people trying to sell to us, and fewer people trying to buy from us," he said, adding that memory and SSDs show the same pattern.
Pressure on demand is real
Chen called the wave of supply-chain price increases a rare phenomenon of tech inflation, and he did not pretend it was painless. He acknowledged that the higher prices are already pressuring demand, and research firms expect global PC shipments to decline by double digits in 2027, although the higher average selling prices could offset the revenue impact for the manufacturers.
In the same set of remarks, carried by ITHome citing Taiwan's Economic Daily, Chen said Acer is still holding relatively high memory inventory and expects memory costs to fall in 2027. He also dismissed the idea that the largest AI companies are about to slow down, arguing that the technology has its own pace and will only accelerate. Acer now draws roughly half its business from PCs, with the rest spread across other business units.
Why it cuts against the panic
iHeartGeek has covered this crunch from the shelf side: rising panel prices, the Polymega increase and the memory-driven cost pressure now baked into console and handheld pricing. The chairman of one of the five biggest PC makers is making a narrower argument than most of that coverage implies. If DDR4 and standard DDR5 are genuinely ample and only the newest high-end platforms are constrained, then the shortage is a product-mix problem as much as a supply problem, and the machines most buyers actually purchase are not the ones being squeezed hardest.
That is a forecast from a company with an obvious interest in calm, and Chen is speaking about the market his own business depends on. It is still a more specific prediction than most of the analyst noise around memory, because it names a quarter, a range and an end date.
Our opinion
Chen's numbers are useful precisely because they are unhelpful to everyone selling the story of an endless shortage. A 5 to 20 per cent rise is bad news for anyone buying a laptop this Christmas, but it is a shopping problem, not a crisis, and the range itself tells you the difference is memory capacity, which means a buyer can choose to spend less. The mid-2027 peak is the more valuable line, because it gives the market an end point to argue about instead of a permanent state of anxiety.
The scepticism should go both ways. Acer holds memory inventory and wants to sell PCs, so a chairman talking supply down is not a neutral witness, and the same remarks concede that double-digit shipment declines are on the table for 2027. Treat this as a floor and a ceiling for the next four quarters rather than a reassurance, and buy the machine you need when you need it rather than trying to time a peak nobody can see.