Your Next TV Costs More Because of AI
The price of a television has surprisingly little to do with television. It has to do with how much memory the set needs to run its operating system — and what everyone else is currently willing to pay for that memory.
At the moment, everyone else is data centres, and they're paying a lot.
The numbers
Memory prices climbed more than 40% in the first quarter of 2026, with another 20% projected for the second. Samsung had already raised some memory chip prices by as much as 60% across the autumn of 2025. At CES in January, Samsung's co-CEO put it plainly: no company is immune.
This isn't a shortage in the 2020 sense. Nothing exploded, no fab burned down, no shipping lane closed. Memory makers are running at capacity — they're just selling to whoever pays most, and AI infrastructure pays most. Every DRAM module headed for a server rack is one that isn't going into a TV, a phone, or a laptop.
Why TVs get hit hardest
A modern smart TV is a computer with a big screen bolted on. Operating system, app store, streaming clients, voice assistant — all of it needs memory. When memory costs go up, TV manufacturing costs go up with them, and there's no clever engineering trick that gets a set out of it.
TVs are also being squeezed from a second direction. LCD panel prices have been rising on their own, so the two biggest line items in a television's bill of materials are climbing simultaneously. Shipments have been slipping across TVs, receivers and audio gear as manufacturers decide which products get the scarce parts.
It won't land evenly. Premium sets carry the most memory, so they absorb the biggest increase, while the cheapest models in a lineup barely move. Expect the gap between entry-level and flagship to look wider this year than it usually does.
Why you haven't felt it yet
Component prices move months ahead of shelf prices. Retailers sell through inventory bought at the old cost, supply contracts renew on their own schedules, and manufacturers eat part of the increase until they decide they can't anymore. Qualcomm has already said price increases will be necessary as AI demand strains not just memory but wafers, packaging and testing capacity.
That lag is exactly why this matters right now. The increases from earlier in the year are reaching stores during the window when most people actually buy a television.
There's an odd footnote here. Samsung is booking record profits from its memory business while its device business pays more for parts. The same shortage is a windfall on one side of the building and a headache on the other.
What to do
If a TV, laptop or phone is in your plans for the next six months, buying sooner is the unusual advice that applies this year. Discounts will still come — retailers will run their holiday promotions — but the prices those discounts start from are higher than last year, and heading in the wrong direction.
Get the screen size and panel technology you want, and be readier than usual to skip the top-of-the-line model. The premium tier is where the memory increase concentrates. That's the part where you're paying an AI surcharge.
Image: RDNE Stock project, via Pexels
