Q1 2026 Lead Time Report Highlights
Since Q4 2025, the leading memory suppliers, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, have shifted primarily to allocation-only contract models. These agreements mostly favor large, Tier 1 hyperscale companies and AI businesses that require great amounts of memory. The same suppliers have also begun cracking down on hoarding, leading to stricter enforcement of order sizes.
Additionally, memory isn’t the only market segment feeling the strain of AI demand. As data centers continue their build-outs, the infrastructure needed to support them, such as power, has seen prices rapidly increase. Raw material costs have also been rising steadily, complicated by tariffs and other geopolitical tensions. As such, price trajectories in the active and passive markets are on the rise.
Q1 2026 lead time and price takeaways
Several supplier changes that occurred in Q1 have direct consequences for Q2 planning cycles. Price increases are the hottest topic, with hikes affecting nearly every major category on the BOM. In many cases, these are coordinated movements from competing manufacturers pointing to the same underlying factors. The largest changes to be aware of include:
- Littelfuse: Issued a price increase driven by raw material, labor, and energy costs, effective February 9th.
- Infineon: Saw raw material and infrastructure cost pressures force a price increase effective April 1st, putting additional strain on customers in the automotive and industrial sectors.
- NXP: Issued formal supply continuity guidance requiring customers to provide firm order coverage aligned to published lead times, maintain a minimum 12-week on-hand inventory buffer, and share rolling full-year forecasts. Market signals also suggest NXP will issue an additional price increase notice in April.
- Kyocera AVX: Increased prices for its Specialty Ceramic Technologies, Tantalum Capacitors (MnO2 and Polymer), and Connectors due to rising raw materials costs, effective February 22nd.
- Yageo: Raw material cost pressures have pushed prices up across the R-chip series (RC0402, RC0603, RC0805, RC1206), effective February 1st. This early signal reflects what became a broader passive market pricing trend through Q1.
- STMicroelectronics: Rising energy and transportation costs are driving price adjustments effective April 26th, adding STMicroelectronics to the growing list of analog and embedded suppliers recalibrating their cost structures.
- Lattice Semiconductor: Assembly and test cost increases are behind a 10% price hike which took effect April 5th. The increase affects CrossLink, CrossLinkPlus, ECP5, iCE40, MachXO2, MachXO3, and MachXO3D, a notable move for the low-power FPGA niche.
- MPS: Pricing adjustments are coming on select products starting May 1st, with specific parts yet to be formally announced.
- Onsemi: Citing increases across raw materials, manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure, Onsemi is adjusting pricing on limited products for new orders and shipments after April 1st, continuing a pattern of cost pass-through in the analog and discrete space.
As for the Big Three, Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix have placed most AI-related components on allocation-only status. Production capacity has largely been reassigned to enterprise DRAM and HBM with high margins, causing scarcity and soaring spot prices amid end-of-life procedures for DDR4.
Meanwhile, the Nexperia crisis continues to send ripples through the discrete market. While Nexperia China has begun producing its own chips and Nexperia Netherlands continues to expand in Malaysia, lead times remain elevated across MOSFETs, bipolar components, and protection devices. Buyers are now competing for limited inventory as the supply gap has widened, increasing pressure across the segment and causing constraints for other suppliers.
Quarter-over-quarter comparison
Much has changed since Q4, and the evidence is perhaps most apparent in the memory market. Prices for memory chips have risen 80-90% since last year’s final quarter, with leading suppliers showing no signs of deviating from their allocation-only strategies.
Wafer capacity continues to shift toward HBM and advanced DRAM nodes, further constraining general-purpose DRAM supply. For organizations without established allocation agreements, securing memory through conventional channels is increasingly untenable. On the consumer side, soaring memory prices being passed through as device markups has led analysts to downgrade sales forecasts for PCs and smartphones in 2026.
Raw material and logistics prices have also seen significant increases, pushing suppliers across the interconnect and passive markets to issue pricing adjustments. Scarcity due to AI demand is driving much of this crunch, specifically across rare inputs such as silver.
Compounding this, the U.S.-Israel and Iran conflict has driven oil prices higher, inflating logistics costs globally. The Middle East also supplies a swath of critical raw materials, including helium, bromine, and tungsten, to Southeast Asian manufacturing and processing hubs. Prolonged conflict risks further price increases on multiple levels and suppliers will look to offset added costs on end users.
Looking ahead at Q2 and beyond
Q2 planning requires a sharper focus on supplier exposure. Structural pressures in memory and specific discrete lines will continue to complicate procurement through at least mid-2026. Geopolitical developments layered atop AI demand are amplifying risk in targeted segments but have far-reaching consequences for the entire electronic components supply chain.
Expect price fluctuations to continue through 1H26 with limited predictability.
The most immediate priorities include proactive management of memory exposure and treating supplier diversification as an operational necessity. The Nexperia situation demonstrated how quickly a single-supplier dependency can ripple across an entire ecosystem, tightening lead times even where aggregate capacity technically exists. With geopolitical tensions, raw material constraints, tariff exposure, and AI demand all present simultaneously, the number of variables capable of triggering the next disruption is unusually high.
