Jason Chen, chairman of Taiwanese PC and IT hardware maker Acer, dismissed the memory Big 3's claim that memory prices will keep rising through 202X, saying it simply isn't true. Specifically, he said the reason memory makers keep coming out and saying "the price uptrend will continue into 2027" is that antitrust rules prevent them from coordinating prices directly, so they use public statements to send a kind of "signal" to one another. He said a veteran like him can tell just by looking. He also pushed back on the market narrative of a memory supply shortage: "No. How could it stay short forever? Chinese capacity keeps coming onto the market. The supply shortage problem has already completely disappeared." Chen also expects the cost of the SSDs and memory Acer holds in 2027 to be lower than this year. If that gets reflected in end product prices, he sees a possibility that prices at least stop rising and stabilize in the second half of next year. Chen said prices could be raised further in 1Q27 as well. But since this is a period of pricing chaos, he expects the size of the increases to gradually shrink. He estimates component prices could peak around the middle of 2027, when the capacity that chipmakers have added is expected to start running in earnest. After that, prices would enter a stable phase, and whether they can actually come down in the second half remains to be seen. He admitted, though, that nobody can know the exact timing of the reversal. Chen said PC selling prices coming back down is strictly "a hope." He criticized component suppliers for treating price hikes like a fad. Countless suppliers are showing up to notify him of price increases, he said, and a whole series of components, from PCBs to glass fiber cloth to memory, are going up one after another. He wrapped up by saying this chain of price hikes ultimately creates inflation, which in turn pushes central banks to raise rates, and that "this is not a normal phenomenon." *This quote does not reflect my views and is shared solely for informational purposes.