At present, when the storage chip is in a super cycle, the price increase has spread to other electronic components.

The price of resistors has increased by 15%-20%.

On January 16, 2026, the passive component giant Sunway Electronics issued a notice, announcing that starting from February 1, the prices of some resistor products would be raised by 15%–20%, covering series such as RC0402 and RC0603. Sunway Electronics stated that the price increase was mainly due to the rising cost of the chip product line and the sudden surge in the prices of precious metals such as silver, ruthenium, and palladium. Previously, Fuhua High-tech also issued a price increase notice for voltage-sensitive resistors and thick-film resistors on November 2025. 

The current rise in the price of silver is the key factor driving the soaring prices of passive components. Industry analysts point out that if the upstream silver paste and copper paste also increase in price due to the rise in raw material costs, there will be a chain reaction in the supply chain, and the prices of resistors and capacitors will be difficult to stabilize.

Semiconductor material giant raises prices by 30%

Meanwhile, the prices of basic semiconductor materials are also facing upward pressure. On January 19th, it was reported that Japanese semiconductor material supplier Resonac announced that due to the tight supply and rising prices of raw materials such as copper foil and glass fiber cloth, along with increased personnel and transportation costs, it will raise the prices of its entire series of copper-clad laminates and adhesive films by more than 30% starting from March 1, 2026. 

According to the data, copper-clad laminates are the core materials for chip substrates and printed circuit boards, and are widely used in fields such as AI chips and data centers. Resonac predicts that the target market size from 2024 to 2028 will increase from 117 billion US dollars to 344 billion US dollars, with a compound annual growth rate of 31%.

Storage chips enter a super cycle

In fact, the storage chip market was the first to enter a price increase cycle. In the beginning of the second quarter of 2025, some original manufacturers began to halt the production of old process DRAM products such as LPDDR4X and DDR4, leading to a shortage of supply. As server demand concentrated and released a huge number of orders in the fourth quarter, the production capacity of the original manufacturers shifted more towards the server market, further exacerbating the supply shortage in the consumer market. CFM Flash memory market data shows that the year-on-year growth rates of DRAM and NAND Flash in 2025 reached 386% and 207% respectively. 

Since the beginning of 2026, the prices of DRAM products used in servers have significantly increased, with the increase generally ranging from 60% to 70%. And the price increases for different specifications of chips show significant differences. DDR4 memory is expected to see a 90% increase in contract prices in the first quarter of 2026, with the increase even exceeding that of DDR5 (click to review). 

When will this wave of price hikes come to an end? Some analysts suggest that the driving force behind the increase in storage chip prices, which is driven by server demand, capacity constraints, and strategic shifts, has a clear medium-to-long-term nature. Its impact will last at least throughout the entire year of 2026.