Canon no longer expects memory prices to ease next year as AI demand strains supply, and says it will look to pass higher costs on to buyers.
If you’ve been holding off on buying a new Canon camera, the company’s latest earnings call might give you something to think about. Speaking with investors after posting its third-quarter 2026 results, Canon said it no longer expects memory prices to come down in 2027, and that if costs remain elevated, it will look to offset them through higher camera prices. And Canon isn’t the only camera maker dealing with higher memory costs.
What Canon said
Memory costs have come up at every one of Canon’s earnings calls this year, so the topic itself isn’t new. What is new is the outlook: earlier this year, Canon said it expected memory prices to begin easing in the second half of 2027. Now, according to Canon’s Q3 Q&A summary, it doesn’t expect them to fall next year at all. The company says it has already secured the memory it needs for 2026, but expects to pay more for components in 2027, and that its policy is to offset those higher costs through price increases.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t entirely hypothetical. Canon told investors in July that it had already raised some prices in response to rising costs, including memory, though it didn’t say which products or markets were affected. It says it will continue to weigh further increases against their effect on sales.
Why it matters to camera buyers
Memory is central to how modern digital cameras work. High-speed continuous shooting, pre-capture modes, subject-tracking algorithms and more all lean on fast, plentiful memory. As AI-related demand has driven memory prices up across the industry, camera makers have found themselves competing for the same production capacity as data center operators, which are effectively the 800-pound gorillas in this market.
As a strategy, securing its memory supply early bought Canon time. But it isn’t a long-term solution if the underlying costs persist.
The wider picture
One company warning about costs is one thing. Several camera makers dealing with the same problem at once is another. Other manufacturers have also flagged rising memory costs to investors this year, and some have already started raising prices. That includes the US, where Blackmagic Design has raised prices on some of its cinema cameras and storage products, citing memory costs, and US buyers have already absorbed multiple rounds of tariff-driven price increases since last year.
When multiple camera makers are facing the same cost pressure, the probability that any one of them absorbs it entirely, rather than sharing it with buyers, drops considerably. Ultimately, this isn’t a Canon-specific story but an industry pricing story that happens to be told clearly through Canon’s investor relations disclosures.
What to watch
Canon reports its full-year 2026 results early next year, and that call will be a useful checkpoint. By then, the company should have a clearer read on what it expects to pay for memory in 2027, and how much of that it plans to pass on to buyers. And because Canon sells more interchangeable-lens cameras than any other manufacturer, its pricing decisions are likely to be closely watched by the rest of the industry.
Are you factoring potential price increases into any planned camera or lens purchases? Let us know in the comments.
