October's Price Rounds: Power Semiconductors, MCUs and Passives All Move at Once

On 10 October 2026 onsemi's new price list took effect. It is the company's third adjustment this year, after rounds in April and July, and it covers power devices, power-management ICs and industrial sensing parts. The stated drivers are the ones we keep hearing: raw material, manufacturing, energy and infrastructure costs, plus demand growth in power, industrial and data-centre applications. Allegro MicroSystems is adjusting its entire portfolio from October as well.

Read that together with the rest of the autumn notices and the pattern is hard to miss. ST has already lifted several product families from 23 August, its third move this year. Infineon has run two rounds, the second landing in July. ADI's second round took effect on 13 September and reached as far as 30% on some military-qualified parts with the /883 suffix, around a thousand part numbers in scope. On the MCU side, NVT raised prices on a portion of its portfolio by 10 to 20% from 1 October. Passives followed earlier: Samsung Electro-Mechanics lifted MLCC shipment prices by 30% from 1 August, Taiyo Yuden adjusted selected products from 1 September, and broadline passive categories have moved 5 to 30% since the second half of 2025. Distributors describe quoting that changes by the day.

It is not only chips

Laminates are moving too, and that is the line item most board buyers feel first. Electronic-grade glass fabric prices rose 13 to 16% month on month in October, with 1080 fabric quoted around CNY 18.3 per metre, 2116 at 17.7 and 7628 at 13.1. Kingboard's FR-4 copper-clad laminate is reported around CNY 340 per sheet, up from roughly CNY 70 in July 2025. HVLP copper foil is short by an estimated 1,500 tonnes. Citi raised its 2026 to 2028 earnings forecasts for Kingboard by 8 to 13% on the October fabric inflation and expects further laminate price increases before the year is out. The broker view on the passive and chip side is similar in shape: capacity is being absorbed by AI-related demand, mature-node capacity in particular, and additive capacity is not arriving quickly. Murata's Okayama subsidiary is putting about JPY 9 billion into new ceramic raw material lines, but construction starts this month and production is slated for April 2028 — useful for the next cycle, no help for this one.

What a buyer should actually do

• Treat old quote validity as expired. If your last quote was issued before September, assume it may no longer be firm. Ask suppliers what validity window they can hold in writing, and plan for shorter windows than you are used to.
• Ask about allocation, not only price. For constrained part numbers the useful question is whether the quantity is actually covered by material. Ask which lines are already allocated and what your position is.
• Fix a rolling forecast instead of chasing spot. Large cloud and automotive buyers are tying up capacity with multi-year agreements. Smaller buyers cannot match that, but a firm three to six month rolling forecast gives your supplier something to plan material against, which is how small customers keep getting served during tight cycles.
• Second-source the parts that hurt. Qualification lead time is the real cost of a shortage. Two MCUs that can share a footprint, alternate MLCC dielectrics and voltage ratings pre-qualified, a second laminate source for your standard stack-up — all cheaper to arrange now than in the middle of an allocation.
• Design for material availability. Compounds the previous point: avoid a BOM that depends on a single new, fast-moving part when an older, wider-availability alternative is acceptable.
• Do not panic-buy. Double-ordering multiplies a shortage. Consolidate instead, and be honest with your supplier about real consumption rather than building a buffer by inflating orders.

Where we stand

We buy components and laminate like everyone else, so our quotes move with the market rather than against it. When a material line moves, we tell you which line moved and by how much, and re-quote at that level instead of burying it in a headline number. For electronic components we quote in USD EXW with the price tiers shown; for PCB and PCBA we quote from a released stack-up, so a laminate change shows up as a line item you can see. If you are planning a build for the first quarter, send the BOM now and we will tell you which lines we expect to be tight.

Note: the figures above are as published by the companies and by trade and financial press in early October 2026. Check the exact part numbers you buy with your supplier — percentage moves differ widely between categories.