Your favorite tech could get more expensive as chipmakers raise prices to meet demand

Many tech products, including smartphones, gaming consoles, video cards, laptops, and more, have become expensive over the last year due to the ongoing global chip shortage. While some experts suggested that the situation could improve by early 2022, it now seems like things aren’t going to change anytime soon. In fact, your favorite tech products may get even more expensive as many chipmakers, including Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. or TSMC, have decided to increase the prices of chips.

TSMC has reportedly notified its customers that it plans to increase prices of advanced chips (7nm and below) by as much as 10%. Meanwhile, chips built on 16nm and above nodes will see a much steeper 20% hike, according to a fresh report from DigiTimes (via Tom’s Hardware). The report notes that the hike will see the price of a single wafer processed on a 28nm node going all the way up to $3,000 from January 2022. The increased prices will apply to orders scheduled to be fulfilled starting December.

Since last fall, TSMC has raised chip prices by more than 10%. But as the strong demand continues to outrun supply, the Taiwanese company has decided to increase prices once again. Fabless semiconductor companies such as Qualcomm, Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and MediaTek all rely on TSMC to produce their chips. As such, this price hike will most likely have far-reaching effects on everything from smartphones and tablets to video cards and gaming consoles. However, since these increased prices come into effect from Q1 2022, it likely won’t affect products launching in the next few months.

TSMC previously said it would invest about $100 billion in advanced semiconductor technologies, which will include building greenfield chip manufacturing plants and expanding the capacity of existing foundries.

Besides TSMC, other chip foundries that have hiked prices of chips include GlobalFoundries, Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing (PSMC), Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), and United Microelectronics (UMC).

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