Recently, China's offline retail market for laptops has witnessed a fresh surge in price hikes. Mainstream brands such as Lenovo, HP, and Dell have adjusted prices across their entire product ranges, with overall increases surpassing 20%. Some popular models have even seen steeper price rises. A computer store owner in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, mentioned that a Lenovo laptop, which could be bought for just over 3,000 yuan last year, now costs over 4,000 yuan. This has been accompanied by a notable decrease in customer footfall and a stark contrast in sales performance.
This latest round of price increases is mainly attributed to the skyrocketing prices of upstream memory chips. Due to the escalating demand for AI computing power, memory manufacturers have redirected a significant portion of their production capacity towards AI-specific memory. This has resulted in a constrained supply of consumer-grade memory chips and a substantial surge in costs. Moreover, with global PC shipments projected to decline, manufacturers have opted to raise prices and concentrate on the high-end market segment to safeguard their profit margins.