India, Dec. 26 -- If you have a mental sticky note to upgrade your smartphone or laptop in 2026 because your battery is dying, or perhaps that version of Windows 10 is nagging you about its end-of-life, there's bad news. And you might want to rethink that plan.

This is what a report from IDC that landed earlier this week suggests. It is technical stuff, dense with acronyms like DRAM and NAND. But once stripped of the jargon, the bottom line is flashing red: The era of cheap, abundant computing power that we took for granted is over.

What it means is that if you walk into a store next year to buy a gadget, you are going to face a disagreeable reality: You will likely pay significantly more for a device that is barely better than the one ...