This is the first edition of a quarterly price briefing that tracks what moved, why, and what it means for India. All numbers below are annual observations frozen as of August 2026. For the live data and full sources, see the Semiconductor Price Tracker.
Data provenance note: the memory series in this briefing are drawn from the Stanford Digital Assets Model memory-prices dataset, which compiles retail-derived $/GB from Keepa (DDR3/DDR4/DDR5 cheapest available) and John C. McCallum’s historical series. These are not contract or spot prices — they track what the cheapest DDR module cost per gigabyte at retail. Contract prices, tracked by TrendForce and DRAMeXchange, are cited editorially where available but not republished.
What moved
Memory is the story, and it shows up cleanly in retail data. DRAM cheapest-DDR sits at $3.96/GB in 2026 after jumping from $1.83 in 2024 to $4.04 in 2025 — a 121% year-over-year move that is the retail signature of the current supercycle. 2026 to date shows a small softening (-2% vs 2025 close). NAND cheapest is at $0.088/GB, up 54% year-over-year from $0.057 in 2025, and still climbing — three years of declines reversed into a two-year climb.
Contract markets have moved more sharply than retail. According to TrendForce, Q1 2026 DRAM contract prices rose roughly 90% quarter-on-quarter, driven by HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) demand for AI training clusters. Because HBM production diverts wafer starts from standard DDR, HBM tightness translates into DDR tightness with a lag. That lag is what we are seeing show up in retail now.
Discretes and power are climbing on a different cycle. SiC and GaN capacity constraints, combined with EV and renewable-energy demand, are pushing prices for power devices upward. TI, Infineon and NXP have all announced selective price increases in the 15 to 85% range on catalogue parts through 2025 and 2026 (company disclosures, cited in each firm’s investor updates). The BLS producer price indexes for integrated circuits, discrete semiconductors, and semiconductor manufacturing overall — three FRED series tracked on the price tracker — are the standard reference for how these movements aggregate at the US industry level.
India’s import bill. India’s annual IC imports (HS 8542) reached $28.62 billion in 2025, up from $23.45B in 2024 and $19.22B in 2023 — a 27x climb from roughly $1B in 2010, per UN Comtrade. Wafers (HS 3818) and photoresists (HS 370790) are tracked as per-kilogram unit values; both are noisier than the IC bill because mix shifts across substrate grades and chemical formulations dominate year-to-year moves. The companion report walks through the interpretation.
Why
Three forces are converging:
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HBM demand. AI training clusters consume HBM3E at rates that exceed combined Samsung/SK hynix/Micron ramp schedules. HBM production diverts wafer starts from standard DDR, tightening the entire DRAM market.
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Supply discipline. After the 2023 downturn, all three major memory makers cut capex. The supply response to the current demand surge is measured, not panicked. This is a learned supercycle.
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Power transition. The shift from silicon to SiC and GaN in power electronics has created genuine supply constraints at mature nodes (28nm+). EV inverters, on-board chargers and solar microinverters all need power semiconductors that the fabs are still scaling to produce.
The India lens
India’s tariff structure creates a split: finished ICs enter duty-free while raw inputs carry a duty stack. Statutory rates on the semiconductor-related HS codes are laid out in the tracker’s duty table, which cites the CBIC customs tariff and carries an asOf date on each row (rates change with each Union Budget and with mid-year notifications). The practical implication for a new Indian fab: the finished chip it competes against enters duty-free, while its own wafer and photoresist imports do not — unless project-specific exemption notifications under the semiconductor scheme apply, which they often do.
What to watch next quarter
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HBM supply additions. SK hynix’s Icheon M15X and Samsung’s Pyeongtaek P4 are both ramping HBM3E. If yields improve faster than expected, the DRAM supercycle could soften by Q4 2026 into 2027.
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India’s Union Budget 2026-27. Any changes to customs duty on semiconductor inputs (HS 3818, HS 3707) would directly affect the landed-cost calculus for Tata Electronics Dholera and the Sanand OSAT cluster.
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BLS PPI revisions. The September PPI release will capture August manufacturing data, the first full month after TI’s latest round of price increases.
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Comtrade 2025 annual data. The full-year 2025 trade data for India should be available by Q4, which will update the import unit-value series on the tracker with a complete fiscal-year picture.
All data in this briefing is drawn from public sources laid out on the Semiconductor Price Tracker. The companion report, India’s Semiconductor Input Bill, provides deeper analysis of the Comtrade unit-value series and the duty stack.
Next edition: Semiconductor Price Briefing Q4 2026, scheduled for November 2026.