Consumers are likely to witness high memory chip prices as no significant capacity addition is in the pipeline over the next 12-18 months, said Ashok Chandak, President, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) on Wednesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of Bharat Digital Infrastructure Association (B-DIA) event here, he said that setting up a memory chip plant will take time to get established in the country.
“Memory makers cannot set up a plant in a few days. We are not seeing any significant capacity coming up in the next one and a half years. There will be a price rise due to high demand, and consumers will need to bear the burden,” Chandak said.
High demand
The price of devices, especially smartphones, has gone up by 20-30 per cent in the last six months. The entire memory capacity of memory chip maker Micron in India has been booked due to high demand, he informed.
Chandak also said the ongoing crisis in West Asia is impacting the entire economy, and there is some impact on electronics sector here.
“The critical raw materials, such as petrochemical plants, diesel, manganese, chemicals and other gases, have seen an impact. It has an impact on the economy as well. Some electronics components have also been impacted,” he said.
The IESA President also said that India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 (ISM 2.0), which is soon going to kick off, will bring some relief for the country and boost the semiconductor ecosystem, which will reduce dependency on imports.
When asked about industry expectations on the incentives under ISM 2.0, he said that it should be more than the previous edition, which was $10 billion.
Recently, Chandak had told busineesline that shortage is materially impacting affordability and extending replacement cycles, and it was mostly driven by by strong artificial intelligence demand and because of superior margins there, memory manufacturers are increasingly allocating capacity toward high-bandwidth memory.
Published on May 20, 2026