For the first time in television manufacturing history, the chips inside a TV cost more to source than the screen itself. That is not a typo and it is not limited to a single factory report. According to Omdia data reported by DigiTimes and confirmed in TechRadar’s October 3, 2026 report, the processing board in some smaller LCD televisions now accounts for 45% to 50% of total manufacturing cost, up from just over 10% in the second quarter of 2025. The display panel, long the single biggest line item in a TV’s bill of materials, has been pushed into second place.
The cause is not a TV-industry problem. It is an AI data center problem that has spilled over into living rooms. Basic DRAM hit roughly $25 per chip in August 2026, a 4.4x jump from a year earlier, while NAND flash climbed to around $30.50, nearly nine times its price twelve months prior. Those are commodity-memory prices, the exact same chips that go into laptops, game consoles, routers, and now budget televisions. The AI boom’s appetite for HBM and high-density DRAM has crowded out the wafer capacity that used to make cheap memory for everything else.
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The Numbers Behind the Processor-Panel Flip
TrendForce has tracked this shift from both sides of the TV bill of materials, and its research lines up with the TechRadar reporting almost exactly. In fact, ET News’ own reporting on Omdia’s data had already projected that small LCD-TV mainboards would exceed panel costs sometime in the second half of 2026, months before TechRadar’s October figures confirmed it had actually happened. Before the current memory shock, DRAM represented just 2.5% to 3% of a television’s manufacturing cost. That share has since climbed to roughly 6% to 7%, and in the affected 32-inch and sub-40-inch LCD segment, the entire processing board, DRAM, NAND, Wi-Fi module and system-on-chip combined, now outweighs the panel.
Panels have not gotten cheaper during this period either, which makes the crossover more striking rather than less. TrendForce’s January 2026 note on TV brand profitability flagged simultaneous increases in memory, display panels, and precious metals as a direct threat to TV-maker margins, and warned that further downward revisions to 2026 global TV shipment forecasts were likely. By late September 2026, the firm’s panel-industry research projected total TV-panel costs would rise another 4% to 7% quarter over quarter in Q4 2026, even as panel demand was expected to fall 4% in the same period as brands and retailers pulled back against the higher costs.
Put differently: panels got more expensive, and memory got dramatically more expensive, and the two trend lines crossed. A 32-inch budget LCD TV that used to spend most of its bill of materials on glass and backlighting is now spending nearly half of it on commodity silicon that, a year ago, nobody would have called a budget-buster.
| Component | Approx. Price or Share, Pre-Crisis | Approx. Price or Share, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic DRAM chip | ~$5.70 (implied, Aug. 2025) | ~$25 (Aug. 2026) | ~4.4x |
| NAND flash chip | ~$3.40 (implied, 2025) | ~$30.50 (2026) | ~9x |
| DRAM share of TV bill of materials | 2.5%-3% | 6%-7% | ~2.3x |
| Processing board share of small-TV cost | ~10% (Q2 2025) | 45%-50% (Q3 2026) | ~4.5x |
| 4GB DDR4 contract price (TV-grade) | Baseline, early 2025 | 4x+ year over year by Jan. 2026 | 4x+ |
| TV panel total cost (Q4 2026 forecast) | Q3 2026 baseline | +4% to +7% QoQ | Rising, but slower than memory |
Why AI Data Centers Are Driving Up TV Prices
The link between a hyperscale AI cluster and a $250 Walmart television runs through a handful of fabrication plants. TrendForce’s September 2026 press center notes describe continued expansion in AI server demand keeping HBM and conventional DRAM in direct competition for the same limited advanced-process wafer capacity. When Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron allocate more lines to HBM4 for Nvidia, AMD, and the hyperscalers building out AI infrastructure, there is less capacity left over for the commodity DDR4 and DDR5 that go into cost-sensitive consumer electronics.
This is not a new storyline on its own. Tech Insider has covered the DRAM side of this crunch extensively this year, from RAM prices jumping 485% as DRAM hit a record $42 a chip to the HBM4 crunch pushing DRAM inventory below 10 days of supply. What is new in October 2026 is how far downstream the shortage has traveled. Earlier in the year, the pain was concentrated in GPUs, gaming PCs, and premium laptops. TechRadar’s January 2026 reporting already warned that smart speakers, smart TVs, and in-car entertainment systems would eventually feel the same squeeze as computers and consoles, and that prediction has now played out in TV bill-of-materials data nine months later. BGR’s March 2026 coverage likewise identified smart TVs as coming victims of the RAM-shortage price shock.
Micron’s own numbers help explain why relief is not close. The company posted a record $133 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue, yet its stock stayed largely flat, a sign that Wall Street already expects memory scarcity, not abundance, to define the next several quarters. Micron’s CEO separately said the company’s memory supply was already 75% sold out for 2027, a detail that matters enormously for TV brands trying to plan 2027 product lines around chips that, by Micron’s own account, are already spoken for.
Which TVs Are Actually Affected
The affected segment is narrower than the “TVs are getting more expensive” headline suggests, and that nuance matters for anyone shopping right now. TechRadar’s reporting is specific: the processor-cost crossover is concentrated in 32-inch LCD televisions and Full HD models in the lower 40-inch range, not premium OLED or large-screen 4K sets. That is because of simple math. A 75-inch OLED panel costs hundreds of dollars on its own, so even a tripled memory bill barely dents its share of the total. A 32-inch LCD panel might cost under $40, so when the DRAM and NAND needed to run its smart-TV software jump from a few dollars to over $50 combined, the processing board can genuinely outweigh the glass.
That distinction also explains why brands have not yet announced sweeping, model-by-model price increases. The available reporting, including TrendForce’s own research notes, documents rising component costs and shrinking margins rather than a confirmed public price list from Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, or Hisense. Brands appear to be absorbing some of the hit for now, which is consistent with TrendForce describing retail price increases as increasingly likely rather than already locked in. Budget and entry-level smart TVs, the segment most reliant on name-brand software stacks and connected features, are the most exposed because they carry the least pricing cushion to begin with.
Smart TV Chips vs. Gaming GPUs: A Different Kind of Memory Squeeze
It is worth separating the TV story from the GPU story, because the mechanics are different even though the root cause is the same wafer shortage. A gaming GPU like Nvidia’s RTX 5090 uses GDDR7 memory built for raw bandwidth, and its price increases have been driven largely by that specialized memory plus chip scarcity at the high end. A TV’s system-on-chip, by contrast, typically needs only a few gigabytes of ordinary DDR4 or LPDDR memory to run its smart-TV operating system, app store, and voice assistant. That memory used to be commodity-cheap precisely because nobody was fighting over it.
The AI boom erased that assumption. HBM and conventional DRAM are now produced on overlapping advanced-process lines, so a decision to dedicate more wafer starts to HBM4 for AI accelerators has a direct, measurable effect on how much 4GB DDR4 costs for a TV maker in Taiwan or Vietnam. TrendForce’s TV-specific research shows contract prices for the 4GB DDR4 commonly used in 4K televisions had already more than quadrupled year over year by January 2026, with a further 60%-plus quarter-over-quarter jump projected for the first quarter alone. That is a commodity-memory shock happening entirely separately from, but for the same underlying reason as, the GPU memory shortage that has made headlines all year.
| Product Category | Primary Memory Type | Reported 2026 Pressure | Who Absorbs the Cost (So Far) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget 32-inch / sub-40-inch LCD TVs | DDR4, NAND (processing board) | Board cost now 45%-50% of total, up from ~10% | Mostly brand margin; retail prices not yet broadly confirmed |
| Premium OLED / large-screen TVs | DDR4, NAND (smaller cost share) | Minimal crossover; panel still dominates cost | Negligible impact so far |
| Gaming GPUs (e.g. RTX 5090 class) | GDDR7 | Record pricing tied to GDDR7 and die scarcity | Passed to consumers via retail price hikes |
| Gaming handhelds (Steam Deck class) | LPDDR5/5X | Documented price hikes tied to DRAM crisis | Partially passed to consumers |
| VR headsets (Meta Quest class) | DDR5 | ~20% price increase reported in 2026 | Passed to consumers |
Historical Context: TVs Have Weathered Component Shocks Before
The television industry is no stranger to bill-of-materials shocks, but this one is unusual in its source. The 2020-2022 LCD panel shortage, triggered by pandemic-era factory shutdowns and a surge in work-from-home TV and monitor demand, pushed up the single biggest line item TV makers have always worried about: the glass itself. Panel makers responded by building new capacity, and prices eventually normalized as that capacity came online and demand cooled.
The 2026 memory shock is structurally different because the competing demand, AI accelerators, is not cyclical in the way pandemic demand was. Hyperscalers are not going to stop building data centers once a backlog clears; if anything, Micron’s 75% sold-out 2027 supply commitment suggests demand is set to intensify rather than ease, and in October 2026 Micron was reported as warning that tight DRAM and NAND supply could persist into 2028 or later, with conditions potentially tightening further in 2027-2028. That is a meaningful departure from the panel shortage playbook, where the fix was simply more factories making the same product faster. Expanding DRAM and NAND capacity takes years and enormous capital investment, and even then, memory makers have strong financial incentive to prioritize the much higher margins available from AI customers over the thin margins typical of commodity consumer electronics memory.
The Ripple Effect Across Consumer Electronics
Televisions are simply the latest category to show up in this pattern, not the first. Tech Insider has already tracked DRAM-driven price increases hitting Meta Quest VR headsets by roughly 20%, Samsung’s P9 SSD line as NAND prices jumped 243%, and SSD prices broadly doubling as the NAND shortage hit gaming PCs. Nvidia added its own data point in October 2026, when the Shield TV Pro streaming box rose $100, a 50% increase, with the company citing climbing memory costs as the reason. Apple moved early to protect its own supply chain, locking in a multi-year NAND memory deal with Kioxia with no volume cap specifically to insulate iPad and Mac production from exactly this kind of spot-market spike.
What makes the TV story notable is that televisions were long considered one of the more insulated categories, because panel cost so thoroughly dominated the bill of materials that memory price swings barely registered. That insulation is now gone for the cheapest, smallest sets on the market, and TrendForce’s Q4 2026 forecast of falling panel demand suggests brands and retailers are already adjusting purchasing and inventory plans in response, pulling back on orders rather than absorbing indefinite cost increases.
Market Impact: What TV Brands and Retailers Are Facing
For TV manufacturers, the math has become genuinely difficult. A brand that priced its entry-level 32-inch model with a certain profit margin eighteen months ago is now absorbing a processing-board cost increase of roughly 4.5x on that same model, on top of the broader climb that Omdia, via Pocket-lint, put at 30-50% or more for TV manufacturing costs in April 2026, with no equivalent increase in what budget-conscious shoppers are willing to pay for a small television. TrendForce’s explicit warning that 2026 global TV shipment forecasts face further downward revision reflects that squeeze directly: when a product category’s cost structure breaks this badly, the natural response is to ship fewer units rather than absorb unsustainable losses on every unit sold.
Retailers face a parallel problem. Entry-level and budget TVs are typically the highest-volume, lowest-margin segment of any electronics retailer’s lineup, used as traffic drivers and door-buster promotions. If the wholesale cost of those models keeps climbing while shelf prices stay roughly flat to preserve the promotional appeal, retailer margins compress even faster than manufacturer margins. That dynamic likely explains part of why confirmed, public, model-specific price increases have been slow to materialize even as the underlying component costs have already shifted dramatically.
Competitive Comparison: How Exposed Is Each TV Segment
Not every TV maker and segment carries the same exposure. Budget-focused brands that compete heavily on small-screen, entry-level pricing, think sub-$300 32-inch and 40-inch sets common in value retail channels, carry the most direct exposure, because their cost structure was built around cheap commodity memory that no longer exists at the old price. Premium brands anchoring their lineups around large-screen OLED and Mini-LED sets are comparatively insulated, since panel cost still dwarfs the processing board on a 65-inch or 75-inch set even after a multi-fold DRAM and NAND price increase.
There is also a software angle worth noting. Smart TV platforms that run heavier, more feature-rich operating systems with built-in app stores, voice assistants, and streaming hubs generally need more onboard memory and storage than simpler, display-only panels. That means brands leaning hardest into smart-platform differentiation as a selling point are, somewhat ironically, also the ones most exposed to this specific cost shock, because their software ambitions require exactly the commodity memory that has become scarce.
What This Means for Shoppers Right Now
For anyone shopping for a television in late 2026, the practical takeaway is that budget small-screen sets are the least stable part of the market from a pricing standpoint. A 32-inch or sub-40-inch LCD TV that looks like a bargain today may not stay that way for long if brands start passing through the processing-board cost increases that TrendForce and Omdia have already documented on the supply side. Shoppers who have been eyeing a secondary or bedroom TV in that size range have a reasonable incentive to buy sooner rather than wait for a holiday-season discount that may be smaller than usual, or may not fully materialize at all.
Premium and large-screen buyers face a gentler version of the same pressure. Panel costs are still rising 4% to 7% quarter over quarter heading into Q4 2026 per TrendForce’s forecast, so prices in that segment are unlikely to fall, but they are also not being hit by the same dramatic multiple increases playing out in the processing board. The safest assumption across the board is that 2026 and 2027 are unlikely to be a buyer’s market for new televisions, regardless of screen size.
Five Predictions for the Rest of 2026 and Into 2027
1. Budget TV price increases become public and specific within two quarters. TrendForce’s own language, describing retail price increases as increasingly likely, suggests brands are close to a tipping point where margin absorption is no longer sustainable, particularly heading into the 2026 holiday shopping season and CES 2027 announcements.
2. Entry-level screen sizes shrink or get discontinued at some brands. If a 32-inch set’s processing board costs nearly as much as the panel, some manufacturers may find it more profitable to push buyers toward 40-inch-plus models where the economics are less broken, effectively raising the market’s practical price floor.
3. TechRadar’s own warning that conditions won’t improve in 2027 looks likely to hold. With Micron reporting its 2027 memory supply already 75% sold out, there is little visible capacity relief scheduled to arrive before new fabs, which take years to build, come fully online.
4. More consumer categories will report the same crossover pattern. Following the path already seen in VR headsets, SSDs, and now TVs, expect similar bill-of-materials stories to surface in routers, smart speakers, and other connected-home devices that rely on the same commodity DRAM and NAND pools.
5. Chinese memory makers gain ground as Western and Korean supply stays allocated to AI. With CXMT and YMTC both expanding into DRAM and NAND respectively, cost-sensitive TV and consumer-electronics makers have a growing incentive to diversify sourcing away from Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron, all three of which have clear financial reasons to prioritize AI-accelerator customers.
How This Fits Into the Broader AI Chip Supercycle
Step back far enough and the TV processing-board story is really a single data point in a much larger reallocation of global semiconductor capacity. TSMC posted record revenue of NT$514.8 billion, up 53.3%, almost entirely on the back of AI chip demand, a number that reflects how thoroughly leading-edge fabrication capacity has been redirected toward AI accelerators and away from the kind of mature-node commodity chips that power a $250 television. Memory follows a similar logic. Samsung and SK hynix’s HBM4 lines serve Nvidia and AMD’s roadmaps, and every wafer start dedicated to that business is, by definition, a wafer start not making DDR4 for a TV motherboard.
This is precisely the dynamic Tech Insider has tracked across GPU pricing, where relief for gamers has already been pushed to 2028 as DRAM prices jumped a record 95% earlier this year. The TV story confirms that the squeeze is not confined to high-end gaming hardware. It has become a general-purpose constraint on anything that needs ordinary memory chips, and televisions, as one of the highest-volume electronics categories on earth, were always going to be where that constraint became most visible to ordinary consumers.
Modeling the Bill-of-Materials Shift
For engineers or analysts who want to model this kind of bill-of-materials shift over time, a simple weighted-cost tracker illustrates how quickly a processing board can overtake a panel once memory prices compound month over month.
def bom_share(panel_cost, board_cost_q2_2025, dram_multiplier, nand_multiplier):
# Simplified model based on TrendForce/TechRadar reported figures
dram_share = 0.5 * dram_multiplier
nand_share = 0.5 * nand_multiplier
new_board_cost = board_cost_q2_2025 * ((dram_share + nand_share) / 2)
total = panel_cost + new_board_cost
return {
"board_cost": round(new_board_cost, 2),
"board_share_pct": round(new_board_cost / total * 100, 1),
"panel_share_pct": round(panel_cost / total * 100, 1),
}
# Example using reported 2026 figures: DRAM ~4.4x, NAND ~9x
result = bom_share(panel_cost=35, board_cost_q2_2025=5, dram_multiplier=4.4, nand_multiplier=9)
print(result)
# Output approximates the ~45-50% board share TechRadar reported for small LCD TVsFrequently Asked Questions
Why do TV chips cost more than TV panels now?
AI data center demand for HBM and high-density DRAM has crowded out wafer capacity that used to make cheap commodity memory for consumer electronics. Basic DRAM hit about $25 per chip in August 2026, a 4.4x year-over-year increase, and NAND flash reached roughly $30.50, nearly nine times its price a year earlier. In small, budget LCD TVs where the panel itself is relatively cheap, that memory cost increase was enough to push the processing board’s share of total manufacturing cost from around 10% to 45%-50%, overtaking the panel.
Which TVs are affected by the memory price crisis?
The crossover is concentrated in 32-inch LCD televisions and Full HD models in the lower 40-inch range. Premium OLED and large-screen 4K televisions are far less affected because their panel costs remain high enough to still dominate the bill of materials even after multi-fold memory price increases.
Will TV prices go up in 2026 and 2027?
TrendForce describes retail price increases as increasingly likely given simultaneous pressure from memory, panel, and precious-metal costs, though confirmed brand-by-brand price hikes had not been widely announced as of early October 2026. TechRadar’s reporting explicitly warns that conditions are not expected to improve in 2027, partly because Micron has said its 2027 memory supply is already 75% sold out.
Is this the same shortage affecting GPU and gaming PC prices?
It is the same root cause, AI-driven demand for memory capacity, but it plays out differently by product. Gaming GPUs are primarily affected by GDDR7 pricing and chip scarcity at the high end, while TVs are affected by much more ordinary DDR4 and NAND pricing used for smart-TV operating systems and storage. Both trace back to memory makers prioritizing AI-accelerator customers over commodity consumer electronics supply.
How much have DRAM and NAND actually increased in price in 2026?
Basic DRAM rose to roughly $25 per chip by August 2026, about 4.4 times higher year over year. NAND flash rose to approximately $30.50, close to nine times its price a year earlier. Separately, TrendForce reported that 4GB DDR4 contract pricing commonly used in 4K TVs had more than quadrupled year over year by January 2026, with a further 60%-plus quarter-over-quarter increase projected for the first quarter of the year.
What other products have been hit by the same memory shortage?
Meta Quest VR headsets saw roughly a 20% price increase tied to DDR5 costs, SSD prices broadly doubled as the NAND shortage hit gaming PCs, and Samsung’s P9 SSD line reflected a 243% NAND price jump. Nvidia’s Shield TV Pro streaming box also jumped $100, a 50% increase, in October 2026, which the company attributed to rising memory costs. Gaming handhelds and consoles have also seen documented price increases tied to the same DRAM crisis throughout 2026.
Should I buy a budget TV now or wait?
Based on the reported cost trajectory, buying sooner carries less risk for budget small-screen TVs specifically, since their processing-board costs have already risen sharply and brands have signaled further retail price increases are likely. Large-screen and premium TV buyers face a more gradual cost increase tied mainly to rising panel costs, so timing pressure is lower in that segment.
Who is tracking TV component costs and memory pricing data?
TrendForce is the primary industry research firm publishing TV bill-of-materials and panel-cost forecasts, while Omdia’s cost-teardown data, reported via DigiTimes and TechRadar, has specifically documented the processing-board-versus-panel crossover in small LCD TVs during 2026.
