The acute shortage of DRAM and NAND flash memory could shut down many consumer electronics companies by the end of 2026, Phison CEO Chien Chen Pang warned in an interview with Chen Ning Kuan of Taiwan's Era News. The Phison CEO warns of a "massive die-off" among consumer electronics companies designing cost-effective products that use even the smallest amounts of DRAM and NAND flash components (think TV set-top boxes, Wi-Fi routers, smart TVs, etc). For instance, an 8 GB eMMC chip used in smart TVs rose in pricing from $1.5 in early 2025, to nearly $20 now. Extrapolate this to the vast selection of products priced under the $100-mark, and you can see how component prices could wreck the consumer electronics industry.

Pricing is only half the problem, the other is supply. Memory is now an extremely supplier-driven market, with manufacturers onboarding orders up to three years into the future (i.e. you order now, your DRAM chip reels won't arrive before 2030. All this said, the crisis could fade by the end of the decade as memory manufacturers build more foundry capacity, and industrial pressure causes geopolitical changes, such as the re-entry of Chinese DRAM and NAND flash companies. Phison is a leading manufacturer of NAND flash-based storage device controllers powering SSDs, flash drives, and memory cards.