The memory shortage will last until 2027, and small and medium-sized mobile phone and notebook manufacturers have begun to save themselves.

Abstract:

According to the latest Reuters survey, independent brands including Fairphone and Jolla have begun to redesign product motherboards and establish strict chip inspection mechanisms to cope with the supply crisis that is expected to last until 2027.

Affected by this, market research organization Counterpoint predicts that global mobile phone shipments will fall by 13.9% year-on-year to 1.08 billion units this year, which is the largest annual decline on record.

For niche manufacturers, the current core conflict is not the price, but whether they can obtain quotas. Fairphone CEO Raymond van Eck said frankly that if he cannot get quota allocation from suppliers, he will be out of business no matter how much the price is.

Currently, in mobile phones priced at US$400 (Quick Technology Note: The current exchange rate is about 2,843 yuan), the memory cost accounts for about 60% of the bill of materials.

At the same time, in order to reduce risks, Finnish mobile phone brand Jolla also adopted extreme engineering methods,

designing two motherboard solutions for its products. The first set of solutions uses integrated storage and memory packaging, while the second set of solutions is designed for independent chips so that production can be quickly switched when a certain packaging form is out of stock.

It must be said that although this dual-motherboard strategy increases R&D costs, it is likely to become a key life-saving trump card in an environment where hardware supply is extremely scarce.

The notebook manufacturer Framework is more aggressive in its strategy. Since it cannot bear the financial pressure of large-scale inventory accumulation, the company has to adopt a non-cancellation order model and place orders in advance to rush for goods when the final price, delivery time and capacity specifications are uncertain.

This kind of near-blind ordering purchasing strategy is actually a manifestation of the loss of bargaining power of niche manufacturers in front of supply chain giants.

To make matters worse, the influx of counterfeit and refurbished chips has also made manufacturers tread on thin ice. Jolla's CEO revealed that they now perform a full stress test on every batch of chips they receive to ensure that the parts are brand new and not refurbished parts disassembled from old equipment.

The entire industry is currently holding its breath waiting for the release of production capacity in 2028. Before then, the survival of niche manufacturers will rely more on engineering flexibility and acumen to the second-hand chip market.