In summary:
- PCWorld reports that Wi-Fi router prices are expected to surge dramatically due to a severe RAM shortage caused by AI data centers consuming vast memory supplies.
- Memory costs now represent over 20% of router manufacturing expenses, jumping from just 3%, with a staggering 600% price increase affecting low-to-mid-end models.
- This shortage impacts consumers facing higher router prices and telecommunications companies struggling with increased broadband rollout costs and supply chain challenges.
PC hardware prices are skyrocketing all over the place, with RAM and SSDs and now even hard drives leading the charge. But there’s another casualty on the horizon: Wi-Fi routers could soon become significantly more expensive. Thus say market researchers, who cite the 600 percent increase in memory prices as the main driving force.
Market analysts at Counterpoint Research have issued this unpleasant prediction, pointing to the fact that RAM isn’t only found in PCs, laptops, smartphones, and tablets… but also in routers.
With AI data centers buying up all the memory on the market, memory prices have risen by 90 percent since the fourth quarter of 2025. Year over year, we’re looking at a price increase of 600 percent. Market analysts expect memory prices to rise further in 2026, peaking in the first half of the year:
While the difficulties being faced by the PC and lower-end smartphone industries with “mobile memory” are now well known, other consumer products like routers, gateways and set-top boxes are affected the most, going by the monthly trends since last year. Over the last nine months, smartphone memory prices jumped 3x, but the prices for “consumer memory”-based broadband products jumped almost 7x.
Routers are hit the hardest, especially for OEMs with an unsecured supply and weaker negotiating power. Memory is now contributing more than 20% of the total bill of materials (BOM) in low-to-mid-end routers, up from around 3% exactly a year ago, according to Counterpoint’s Teardown and BOM Analysis Service.
The market analysts continue:
This rings alarm bells for telcos targeting aggressive broadband rollouts (fiber or FWA) for 2026.
This “memory winter” is going to prolong and slow down deployments as supply becomes a critical issue, in addition to increasing procurement costs for routers, CPEs and set-top boxes. Many leading telcos were also looking to push AI CPEs for fixed or wireless broadband, warranting higher compute and memory semiconductor content. Such plans could now face significant headwinds.
It will be important for telcos to closely monitor these price dynamics, identify which OEMs have secured enough supply, and track updated BOM costs and pricing trends.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
Author: Hans-Christian Dirscherl, Managing Editor, PC-WELT
Hans-Christian Dirscherl began his IT life with Autoexec.bat and config.sys, Turbo-Pascal and C, Sinix and Wordperfect. He has been writing on almost all IT topics for around 25 years, covering everything from news to reviews and buying guides.