Higher memory costs and what this means for your next Garmin or Apple Watch

There’s a new reason your next smartwatch could cost more, and it has nothing to do with better sensors or bigger screens. AI is gobbling up memory chips, prices are climbing, and wearable companies are already warning that the squeeze could start showing up in 2027.

Garmin has already seen the pressure

The memory market is getting uncomfortable for consumer electronics companies. AI servers need huge amounts of high-performance memory, suppliers are prioritising that business, and conventional DRAM and NAND prices are rising as a result.

During its latest earnings call, Garmin said it had been partly protected by memory inventory bought earlier at lower prices. That buffer is now being used up, which means newer and more expensive components will increasingly work their way into costs.

Interestingly, Garmin’s launch prices this year do not yet show a broad jump. Across the watch families we checked, the average starting price rose from around $673 in 2025 to about $1,000 in 2026, but that figure is heavily distorted by the $2,500 MARQ Gen 3 and $1,600 tactix 8 Cerakote Edition.

Take those two premium outliers away and the 2026 average drops to about $700, only around 4% higher than last year. So Garmin has certainly pushed further into premium territory, but there is not much evidence yet of a general price rise across the range.

Apple is facing the same underlying problem on a much larger scale. John Ternus recently called current memory pricing “unprecedented” and said Apple expects the prices it pays for memory to keep rising beyond the December quarter.

Memory prices are still climbing

The latest forecasts show why manufacturers are paying attention. TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 10 to 15% quarter-on-quarter in Q4 2026, while NAND Flash prices are forecast to increase by 15 to 20%.

Those figures should not be confused with retail price increases. A 15% rise in memory prices does not make a smartwatch 15% more expensive because memory represents only one part of the total bill of materials.

Still, the direction is important when companies are building millions of devices. IDC has already identified wearables among the consumer-electronics categories likely to feel the effects of the wider memory shortage, particularly if tight supply continues well into 2027.

So what can we expect in 2027?

An obvious response could be higher retail prices, particularly on premium smartwatches where manufacturers have more room to absorb or pass on additional costs. That does not mean every Apple Watch, Garmin or Galaxy Watch will suddenly cost more next year, but the pressure is clearly moving in that direction.

There are other more nuanced ways manufacturers can respond. A company could keep the same launch price while making a smaller hardware jump, such as leaving storage unchanged for another generation instead of doubling it.

Discounting could also become less generous. A watch could launch at the same official price as its predecessor but spend less time being sold at 15 or 20% below retail, effectively increasing what many buyers actually pay.

Smart glasses may be even more exposed as cameras, video recording, local AI and larger storage capacities become more common. The BleeqUp Rover I recently reviewed carries 64GB of onboard storage, which puts it much closer to a small computing device than a traditional fitness tracker.

Simpler wearables sit at the other end of the scale. Smart rings and screenless fitness trackers generally need far less memory, although cheaper products also have less margin available to absorb even modest component increases.

Nobody really knows yet how much of this will end up on the price tag. But if memory stays expensive, 2027 could be less about one big wave of price hikes and more about pricier models here and there, smaller storage upgrades and fewer really good discounts.