On November 25, 2025, Dell's Vice Chairman Jeff Clarke said something most people ignored: "The cost basis is going up across all products." Then he said: "We're working to minimize—but unable to eliminate—customer cost impacts."
Your next laptop is going to cost more and have worse specs. And Dell told investors six weeks before you'll see it in stores.
OEMs don't announce spec cuts in press releases. They don't send emails warning customers that 8GB RAM is becoming the new budget standard. They tell investors in earnings calls—using phrases like "portfolio optimization" and "configuration flexibility"—months before consumers notice.
And then, when laptops ship with half the RAM and smaller SSDs for the same price, they act surprised that you're upset.
(This is an editorial analysis based on public earnings calls, SEC filings, and industry reports. The conclusions are my own.)
A post on r/laptops from December 2025 went viral:
"Please stop buying 8GB RAM laptops in late 2025. It is a trap. In 2025, 8GB is the new 4GB. Windows 11 alone uses 4-5GB. Open Chrome with 10 tabs and you're swapping to your SSD. I bought a Dell Inspiron at $650 and it stutters doing basic multitasking. I can't upgrade because the RAM is soldered. I'm stuck with this for the next 4 years."
That post had 2,400 upvotes. The top comment: "Dell cuts every possible corner on the Inspiron models."
I spent three days reading earnings call transcripts. What I found: they tell you exactly what they're doing—if you can decode the corporate speak.
The Four-Step Pipeline (Or: How You Get Screwed Six Months Before You Know It)
Step 1: Upstream cost shock
Memory and storage suppliers—Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron—raise prices because they're prioritizing AI data centers over consumer products. HBM for AI chips sells for ~$1,000. Consumer DDR5 sells for $30-40.
TrendForce reported DRAM prices rising 30-40% through 2025. DDR5 retail prices? Up 40-75% since July 2024. SSDs jumped 20-60% in November alone. (I watched NewEgg prices for two months. It's real.)
Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: when AI data centers pay $1,000 per HBM chip and you're paying $30-40 for DDR5, Samsung and SK Hynix have already made their choice. You're not the customer anymore. You're the leftover capacity they'll get to after Nvidia's order ships—if there's anything left.
Step 2: OEM margin math breaks
Dell, Lenovo, HP, ASUS, Acer—they all operate on thin margins. Dell's Client Solutions Group (consumer PCs and laptops) ran at 6% operating margin in Q3 2025. That's razor-thin.
HP's CEO admitted something useful in August 2025: memory chips now constitute 15-18% of a PC's total cost. When memory prices spike 40-75%, that's not a rounding error—that's a fundamental cost driver.
When component costs jump 30-40%, OEMs have three options:
- Eat the cost (kills margins, pisses off investors)
- Raise prices (kills demand, loses market share)
- Cut specs (maintains price point, sacrifices quality)
They pick option 3. Almost every time.
To be fair: OEMs are genuinely squeezed. A 6% margin leaves almost no room to absorb a 40% component spike. Eating the cost would mean losing money on every budget laptop sold. Raising prices would hand market share to Chromebooks and tablets. These aren't easy choices.
But the issue isn't the choice—it's the silence. OEMs could have told consumers what was coming. A blog post costs nothing. An email costs nothing. They chose silence because silence protects quarterly earnings. Honesty protects customers. Different priorities.
And this is where the earnings calls get interesting—because they tell investors exactly what they're doing, just in language designed to not freak anyone out.
Dell's Jeff Clarke, November 25, 2025 earnings call:
"Management is working to minimize—but unable to eliminate—customer cost impacts as the aggregate cost basis moves across all product categories."
Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang, November 20, 2025 earnings call (when asked about rising memory prices):
"While supply shortages and rising component prices are challenges, Lenovo is well-positioned to manage these due to its scale and strong supply chain relationships. The company is confident in maintaining competitive costs and protecting margins."
HP CFO Karen Parkhill, Q3 2025 earnings call:
"We continue to execute with discipline and focus, delivering on our commitments."
Notice what's missing?
- Nobody said: "We're raising prices."
- Nobody said: "We're cutting RAM on budget laptops."
They said they're "managing costs" and "protecting margins" and "executing with discipline."
That's corporate-speak for: the laptops are getting worse, and we're not going to volunteer that information.
Step 3: Decisions are locked before consumers see products
Laptop configurations are decided 6-9 months ahead of retail availability. When Dell talks about "managing configuration mix" in November 2025, they're talking about laptops shipping in Q2-Q3 2026.
By the time you see a laptop with 8GB RAM where 16GB used to be, that decision was made half a year earlier—and disclosed to investors in an earnings call you didn't listen to.
Step 4: Consumers experience it last
Spring 2026: You walk into Best Buy. The $700 laptop that had 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD in 2024 now has 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.
You ask the sales associate what happened. They shrug. "Supply chain issues."
You check online. Tech sites report: "Laptop prices remain stable despite component shortages."
Dell's press release: "We remain committed to delivering value to customers."
Nobody warned you in advance. OEMs told investors. You found out at Best Buy.
Decoding the Bullshit: What They Say vs What They Mean
The actual quotes from Q3/Q4 2025 earnings calls, translated:
Dell
What they said (Jeff Clarke, November 25, 2025):
"The cost basis is going up across all products. Demand for components is way ahead of supply. Strategies are in place to recover costs through pricing, but clearly, we're in a situation that is not typical."
In plain English:
"We're raising prices and/or cutting specs. This isn't temporary. Get used to it."
Jeff Clarke isn't some mid-level executive reading scripted talking points. He's Dell's Vice Chairman and COO—the man who decides what goes into your laptop and at what price.
His compensation for FY2025:
- Base salary: $1.1 million
- Stock awards: $21.5 million
- Total: $25.1 million
And in September 2025—two months before that earnings call—Dell's board granted Clarke a $132.4 million performance-based stock option. 2.5 million shares at $141.77 each. Vests through 2031 if Dell hits market cap and free cash flow targets.
That's $157.5 million in potential compensation. For a man who couldn't spare five minutes to warn the customer buying a $650 Inspiron that it would stutter with basic multitasking.
Jeff Clarke, Dell Vice Chairman & COO — $25M/year + $132M stock options
What they said (David Kennedy, CFO):
"We're managing mix carefully."
In plain English:
"We're shifting customers toward higher-priced configurations because the budget ones won't be profitable anymore."
Notice the word "mix." That's the tell. When executives talk about "managing mix," they're admitting they're making budget options deliberately unattractive to push you toward higher-margin models. This isn't market forces—this is product management strategy disguised as necessity.
My take: "Managing mix" is corporate-speak for making the budget option worse so you'll pay more. The CFO isn't saying "we can't afford 16GB at $700." He's saying "we'd rather you pay $900." When the budget option degrades by design, that's not supply chain—that's strategy.
Lenovo
Lenovo's CEO Yuanqing Yang said this on November 20, 2025:
"Lenovo plans to leverage its procurement power and strategic inventory management to manage rising costs while maintaining market share and profitability."
Translation? "We're big enough to bully suppliers into giving us better deals than ASUS or Acer get. But don't think we're passing those savings to you."
Then Luca Rossi (President of Lenovo's IDG division) said something even more direct:
"With an inflationary component cost environment, the ASP [average selling price] will probably continue to go up. The trend is and will be sustainable, definitely in 2024. And I have no reason to believe that it will not be in 2025."
No corporate speak. No softening. Just: laptops cost more now, they'll cost more next year, get used to it.
Lenovo's CEO Yuanqing Yang ($22M), Dell's Jeff Clarke ($25M + $132M options), HP's Enrique Lores ($19.4M). That's $66.4 million combined in executive compensation. For three men who couldn't spare five minutes to publish a consumer warning.
HP
What they said (Enrique Lores, CEO, August 27, 2025):
"We are seeing an uplift in pricing of AIPCs compared to similar units. We maintain the assumptions that we had shared before of the 5% to 10% price increase driven by AIPCs."
In plain English:
"We're charging 5-10% more for laptops with 'AI' branding (even though the AI features barely work). This offsets some component cost increases while making it look like you're getting something new."
My take: "AI PCs" run the same local features Windows 11 already supports. The branding costs HP nothing. It costs you 5-10%. They're not selling innovation—they're selling a sticker.
What they said (Karen Parkhill, CFO):
"We continue to expect free cash flow to be in the range of $2.6 billion to $3 billion for fiscal year '25."
$2.6-3 billion in free cash flow. That's not a company struggling to survive. That's a company choosing who pays for the shortage—and choosing you.
The 8GB Trap: Why TechRadar Calls It a "False Economy"
Industry analysts are already calling 8GB in 2026 a "false economy." Here's the math: Windows 11 idles at 4GB. That leaves 4GB for everything else. Open 10 Chrome tabs and Spotify? You're swapping to the SSD. The machine stutters. It's not "optimized." It's suffocating.
Microsoft's own Copilot+ PC specification requires 16GB RAM minimum. Microsoft is telling OEMs that 8GB laptops are incompatible with the future of Windows. Dell, Lenovo, and HP are shipping them anyway.
Those 8GB machines will be obsolete for AI features before they're two years old. That's not cost-cutting—that's selling you hardware with a built-in expiration date.
And since most newer laptops have soldered RAM, you can't upgrade later. You're stuck with what they sold you.
E-waste by design. That's what Reddit users are calling these soldered RAM laptops. Because once that soldered RAM fails—and it will—the entire motherboard is trash. No repair. No upgrade. Just landfill. Dell sold 41 million PCs last year. If even 10% have soldered RAM that becomes unfixable in 2-3 years, that's 4 million laptops destined for the dump. Designed to die young.
It's not just RAM. Users report Dell BIOS updates locking them out of undervolting, effectively removing performance features they had when they bought the machine. They call it "hardware protection." You might call it losing control of the device you paid for.
My take: Soldered RAM closes your exit. If you could swap in 16GB when 8GB becomes unbearable, OEMs would lose the forced-upgrade cycle. Framework proved upgradeable laptops work without being bricks. Dell, Lenovo, and HP choose not to build them. You buy a new laptop because they made sure you can't fix the old one.
The Coordinated Silence
All three major OEMs are doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, using almost identical language.
- Dell: "Managing configuration mix"
- Lenovo: "Leveraging procurement power"
- HP: "Maintaining discipline"
They're all acknowledging component cost pressure. They're all protecting margins. They're all avoiding specific commitments about specs.
But none of them are telling consumers what's coming.
TrendForce published a report on December 11, 2025 explicitly stating that laptop manufacturers are "compelled to increase their product prices and reduce specifications."
That report was public. Tech journalists cited it. And yet—go check Dell's website. Check Lenovo's. Check HP's.
You won't find a single consumer-facing statement warning that budget laptops are about to lose half their RAM. The analysts know. The investors know. You don't. That's by design.
The Money Question
Dell's Client Solutions Group: $12.5 billion revenue in Q3 2025. Lenovo IDG: over $15 billion. HP Personal Systems: $9.8 billion. These companies are making tens of billions per quarter. And they can't absorb a 30-40% component cost increase?
Dell's server division runs at 12.4% operating margin—double the 6% on consumer PCs. Jeff Clarke manages both divisions. Guess which one gets protected when costs spike?
What Happens Next
Based on the earnings call language and TrendForce projections:
Q1-Q2 2026:
- Budget laptops ($500-800) start shipping with 8GB RAM as standard instead of 16GB
- Mid-range laptops ($800-1200) maintain 16GB but lose SSD capacity (512GB → 256GB)
- Premium laptops ($1200+) maintain specs but increase prices 10-15%
Q3-Q4 2026:
- If memory prices stabilize (optimistic scenario), OEMs might restore some specs—but prices won't drop
- If memory prices stay elevated (realistic scenario), 8GB becomes the new normal for anything under $1000
2027:
- OEMs will claim they're "responding to market conditions" by offering 16GB again—at a premium
- What cost $700 with 16GB in 2024 will cost $900-1000 in 2027
- And they'll market it as a feature upgrade, not a return to previous standards
The cycle completes: they downgrade your specs, wait for you to normalize it, then charge a premium to get back what you already had. And because they soldered the RAM, you have no choice but to buy a new machine if you want better.
What You Can Do
1. Buy now if you need to upgrade
If you're planning to buy a laptop in the next 6-12 months, do it now. Current specs at current prices are better than what's coming. Once 8GB becomes the standard, you're stuck with it.
2. Check actual specs, not marketing
OEMs will rebrand 8GB laptops as "efficient" or "optimized for AI workloads." Ignore the marketing. Check the spec sheet. If it's 8GB and non-upgradeable (soldered RAM), walk away unless you genuinely don't need more.
3. Vote with your wallet
Framework laptops have upgradeable RAM. Some ASUS and Acer models still use SO-DIMM slots. Support companies that let you upgrade components instead of locking you into planned obsolescence.
4. Spread the word
Share earnings call transcripts. Quote the actual statements from CEOs and CFOs. When OEMs cut specs in Q2 2026 and act surprised, remind people: they told investors this was coming six months earlier.
5. Demand transparency
When you see a laptop listing, look for:
- Is the RAM upgradeable or soldered?
- What was this model's spec last year vs this year?
- Did the price change, and if so, by how much?
OEMs bet on you not noticing. Prove them wrong.
The Bottom Line
Dell's Jeff Clarke wasn't lying on November 25, 2025 when he said "the cost basis is going up across all products."
He just wasn't talking to you. He was talking to investors.
And that's the problem.
OEMs communicate different realities to different audiences. Investors get the truth: costs are rising, margins are under pressure, configurations will change. Consumers get silence—or vague reassurances that "we remain committed to value."
Then, six months later, you walk into Best Buy and wonder why the $700 laptop has half the RAM it used to.
Now you know.
They told Wall Street in November 2025. They just forgot to tell you.
That's the part I can't get past. Not the supply chain. Not the margins. The choice to stay silent.
Sources: Dell Q3 FY2026 earnings call transcript (November 25, 2025), Lenovo Q2 FY2026 earnings call (November 20, 2025), HP Q3 FY2025 earnings call (August 27, 2025), TrendForce market reports (November-December 2025), Dell SEC filings (executive compensation), Microsoft Copilot+ PC specifications, TechRadar, IDC PC market forecasts, company financial filings, retail pricing data from Newegg/Amazon/Best Buy
