Since the third quarter of 2026, the Human Machine Interface (HMI) market has witnessed centralized price adjustments within the year. Weintek issued a notice in late July, Xinje followed suit in September, Pro-face adjusted prices on September 25, Inovance launched a new round of price hikes on October 15, and Siemens set the effective date for this round of adjustments to November 1... As of now, the entities adjusting prices cover mainstream domestic and foreign manufacturers, with price increases ranging from single digits to double digits.
01. Price Hike Dynamics of HMI Manufacturers
MIR has reviewed the price adjustment notices issued by leading HMI manufacturers between July 1 and October 20, 2026. The adjustment ranges of each manufacturer are shown in the table below.
Price Changes of HMI Manufacturers - Partial
Source: MIR DATABANK
As seen from the table, the overall adjustment range for domestic brands in this round is significantly higher—the Weintek cMT series was increased by 10%~28%, and the Inovance ITU7000 by 20%~35%. This is related to the bargaining structure of domestic brands among small and medium-sized customers, as well as their product positioning that is more sensitive to memory and panel costs.
02. Inevitability of Price Hikes: The Cost Structure of HMIs Dictates Price Adjustments
Price adjustments are not isolated pricing behaviors. In terms of material composition, an HMI mainly consists of a main control unit, DDR/LPDDR memory, eMMC/NAND storage, LCD panels (including driver ICs and touch layers), power and interface components, and structural parts. The main control in low-end products mostly adopts MCU solutions, while mid-to-high-end products use A-core SoCs. According to MIR, displays account for approximately 20%~25% of the hardware cost of HMIs, and when combined with memory and storage, they typically account for more than half of the total material cost of the whole machine.
Compared with consumer electronics, HMIs have limited room for adjustment: product models and configurations are relatively fixed, and capacity specifications are difficult to compress; industrial-grade eMMC has higher requirements for write endurance, power-off protection, and wide-temperature performance, and customers have low acceptance for specification downgrades. This means that once upstream component prices rise, transmitting the cost through price adjustments is almost the only viable path.
03. Lag in Price Hikes: Chips Lead, HMI Price Adjustments Lag by One to Two Quarters
The memory trend in 2026 provides a clear reference for the price hikes of HMIs. According to public data, in the first quarter of 2026, DRAM contract prices rose by 93%~96% quarter-on-quarter, and NAND rose by 55%~65%; in the second quarter, DRAM rose by 58%~63% quarter-on-quarter, and NAND rose by 70%~75%; in the third quarter, the DRAM increase narrowed to 13%~18%; since the start of this cycle, the cumulative increase in DRAM prices is about 4.5 times.
Structural differences are more worthy of attention than total volumes. Low-capacity eMMC is the category with the highest increase in this round, rising by an average of about 150% in the first quarter of 2026, of which 4GB rose by 165% and 8GB rose by 183%, while 4~16GB is precisely the mainstream configuration range for HMIs.
The panel side was under pressure during the same period. Driver IC prices doubled, glass substrate suppliers such as Corning increased prices by more than 15%, and BOE, TCL CSOT, HKC, and others issued letters to customers to adjust prices successively in September.
The resulting time lag is explanatory: Component prices have been rising continuously since the beginning of the year. Some HMI manufacturers first digested the costs through inventory and supplier payment terms, which is about one to two quarters behind the actual arrival time of upstream costs, so the price adjustment actions in this round are concentrated in the third quarter.
04. The Chain Behind Price Hikes: AI Capacity Occupation, Not Demand Pull
MIR believes that the price hike of HMI products is closely related to the development of AI, which can be understood in the following three layers:
The first layer is capacity competition. HBM and conventional DRAM share the same set of wafer capacity and front-end equipment. According to Samsung Electronics, HBM currently accounts for about 20% of the total global DRAM wafer capacity, and is expected to approach 30% in 2027. Wafer fabs prioritize the allocation of advanced processes and new capacity to HBM, server DDR5, and enterprise SSDs. The supply of conventional DDR4, LPDDR4X, and low-capacity eMMC contracts accordingly, which means a structural contraction on the supply side, thereby leading to the cost increase of HMI products.
The second layer is the sequence of price hikes. The wave of price hikes driven by the rapid expansion of AI is not only reflected in HMI products: from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026, server and mobile phone memory took the lead in price increases; from the second to the third quarter of 2026, consumer and industrial low-capacity part numbers followed suit with price hikes. The materials used in HMIs are at the end of this sequence, so their price adjustment timing is about one to two quarters later than that of mobile phones and PCs.
The third layer is supply priority. The allocation priority of industrial-grade materials is lower than that of mobile phones and automotive grades. If HMI manufacturers refuse to accept the new prices, they may face supply security risks. Therefore, HMI manufacturers must secure material sources.
05. Implementation of Price Hikes: Price Adjustments Do Not Mean Proportional Increases
The figures listed in the table above are all average adjustment ranges for product groups, and there are discrepancies in the actual adjustments for different order numbers and different configuration products within the same group. Taking Siemens' price adjustment in this round as an example, for the memory cards matching HMIs, if the project usage is large, the accumulated increased costs cannot be ignored. Therefore, the project cost must be calculated based on the price adjustments of all products actually used in the project; otherwise, estimation deviations are likely to occur.
In addition, the gap at the channel level is also quite obvious. According to MIR's communication with industry experts, the actual price increase for customers' procurement is generally lower than the list price. The final transaction price increase for large customers of most brands is between 0% and 5%. This difference reflects not only the customer structure and bargaining power but also the trade-off between market share and profit among different manufacturers.
06. Follow-up Observation on Price Hikes
In the fourth quarter, memory chip prices continued their upward trend, and the cost pressure on HMI products remains unreleased. Whether manufacturers that have not yet adjusted prices, such as Mitsubishi and Leadshine, will follow suit by the end of the year, and whether brands that have already initiated price adjustments will launch a new round of adjustments, remains to be seen. If the new memory capacity is released as scheduled in 2027, chip prices may have room to fall; however, constrained by industry pricing conventions, the downward adjustment range of HMI list prices is expected to be limited.