The technology industry maintains a very high image of the sameit creates and waits for an endless series of self-accumulating revelations: a new chip, a new panel, a new algorithm that promises to reorganize the world. A vision in which each year is reproduced as a survey of the historical accounts that keep the industry dependent on the exploratory spiral of a difficult solution. Y Since artificial generative intelligence entered our lives, this phenomenon has become more evident and tangible than ever before.
But one more time when the market recovers the digital economy is also something much more mundane: cost accounting. The decaffeinated environment (which ended for a few weeks) of Mobile World Congress 2026 was partly due to the war in the Middle East, but also the pace between the discussions and the reality completely fell apart. While great signings herald new course developments, the world of truths presents enormous difficulties in growing up and managing expectations.
Unfortunately, that’s the best place to look understand the moment one enters the electronics business. Gartner expects an increase in the number of personal computers (with a 10.4% increase in 2026) and smartphones (down 8.4%). This is the most significant contraction in the market in more than a decade.
This is not so much a sudden technological desafección, nor a collapse of interest in devices in general (although the integrated AI argument follows from a loss of interest in the end consumer), but rather the cumulative impact of much more prosaic variables: care of semiconductors and especially of memory.
Everyone in the sector is aware of this problem, as you stated in an interview published last week with Pauli Amato, TD SYNNEX’s top manager in Iberia. But the signature analysis amplified concerns to ones not seen since the government’s pandemic crisis: DRAM and SSD units could drop by as much as 130% combined by the end of the year. Converted to the final bill, this means that devices are approximately 17% more expensive for PCs and 13% for smartphones.
The effect on the request is immediate and perfectly rational: If the jump in price grows faster than the jump in performance, the buyer extends the life of the team. Gartner calculates that the average lifespan of computers could increase by 15% among businesses and 20% among consumers by 2026.
And when that happens, the market cools: if fewer units are sold, the demand for higher ranges disappears the entry segment will begin to rotate to the point where the consultant predicts possible disappearance by 2028. Just in the week when Apple, the once vaunted Italian brand, is introducing itself in the low-cost segment.
Over the course of two decades The hardware sector has been keenly scrutinized by renewal cycles that are getting faster and fastera kind of accounting of promises in which each generation justifies the next. Empire, when this mechanism slows down, and it is happening now, the industry has to look for another hype capable of supporting growth.
Ahí encaja la current ditirambo collective alrededor de la inteligencia artificial. Computers with artificial intelligence, phones capable of running models locally or agents that promise to automate tasks within days are part of this intention to reconstruct the purchase argument. But even now there is a caveat: Gartner’s own information advises you mass adoption of these devices could be delayed until 2027. MWC 2026 is the best thing to do today.
For this reason, the sector needs to clear the grave center in another place on the table: infrastructures, data centers, cloud, redes, industrial automation. So many, Personal hardware is reaching a stage of economic maturity where volume is not growing due to pure technological inertia.
It’s a complicated transition for an industry used to living off constant enthusiasm. The price of memory in this case decaffeinates the most active and multi-million dollar industry of all time.
Leave a Reply