The head of Currys, the United Kingdom’s largest consumer electronics retailer, has warned that higher prices for smartphones, laptops, and other devices are inevitable later this year.
The forecast stems from a persistent global shortage of memory chips, which is squeezing margins across the supply chain.
This warning underscores the widening impact of semiconductor supply constraints on the broader consumer market.
While the initial shock of the shortage was felt in data-center infrastructure, the ripple effects are now reaching end-consumer goods.
Retailers are facing elevated input costs that they are increasingly likely to pass on to shoppers, potentially dampening demand in an already sensitive economic environment.
The memory chip shortage has been driven by surging demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, which has diverted production capacity away from consumer-grade components.