PC prices in Taiwan are expected to rise 25-30 percent sequentially in the second quarter due to a spike in the cost of components, especially memory chips, PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) said on Monday.

PC brands faced higher costs in the first quarter, which will escalate in the second quarter due to a global supply shortage of DRAM chips and solid-state drive hard disks, Asustek systems business division general manager Jose Liao (廖逸翔) said.

A 32GB memory chip, for example, cost about NT$3,000 (US$93.75) last year, but that could rise to almost NT$20,000 in the second quarter due to strong demand for memory chips by artificial intelligence (AI) products, Liao said.

Photo: CNA

Central processing units supplied by Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc are also in short supply, driving prices even higher, he said.

Chinese-language Economic Daily News recently reported that retail prices for PCs sold by leading brands, including Asustek, rose 10-15 percent in the first quarter.

Liao said PC brands will have to take on the challenges posed by higher production costs, and noted that his company is planning to raise PC prices by no less than 25-30 percent in the second quarter.

Asustek is now focused on taking short-term orders, for delivery within a quarter, to avoid possible risks posted by wild fluctuations in component prices, he said.

On the positive side, higher product prices in Taiwan have not yet hurt demand, as many consumers look to get ahead of potentially higher prices later in the year, Liao said.

Asustek is likely to see its PC shipments in the first half of this year grow about 10 percent from a year earlier, he said.

The company’s average selling price in the first quarter rose about 15 percent from a quarter earlier and is expected to grow 30 percent for this year as a whole, he added.

Liao made the comments on the sidelines of an event where Asustek unveiled its latest Zenbook A16 notebook computer, which is powered by Qualcomm Inc’s Snapdragon X2 Elite processer to provide 80 trillions of operations per second in AI computing.