This is not only an AI-server story. When HBM and high-end DRAM get pulled into data centers, the leftover market for phones and PCs gets thinner, faker, and more expensive.
Reuters describes makers testing chips because counterfeits follow scarcity. That is a factory-floor problem: incoming inspection, traceability, and the willingness to scrap a lot rather than ship a brick.
If you make hardware, the next 12 months favor designs that use less RAM, document the memory bill of materials, and can swap modules without a full board spin. If you buy hardware, assume cheap laptops and phones keep disappearing first.
Independent phone and laptop makers are redesigning products, screening incoming memory for counterfeits, and raising prices as a shortage they expect to last through 2027 squeezes the low end of the device market.
Counterpoint has already forecast the steepest annual smartphone shipment decline on record this year, with memory costs making entry-level phones hard to build at all.