Bengaluru - Global demand for smartphones, personal computers and gaming consoles is expected to shrink in 2026 as companies from Britain’s Raspberry Pi to HP raise sticker prices to offset surging memory chip costs.

The rapid build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure by US tech firms such as OpenAI, Alphabet-owned Google and Microsoft has absorbed much of the world’s memory chip supply, pushing up prices as manufacturers prioritise components for higher-margin data centers over consumer devices.