GLOBAL demand for smartphones, personal computers and gaming consoles is expected to shrink this year as companies from Britain's Raspberry Pi to HP Inc raise sticker prices to offset surging memory chip costs.
The rapid build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure by U.S. tech firms such as OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and Microsoft has absorbed much of the world's memory chip supply, which has lifted prices as manufacturers prioritize components for higher-margin data centers over consumer devices.
South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix, and Micron, the world's three largest producers of memory chips, have all said that they were struggling to keep up with demand that boosted their quarterly earnings.
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