Once there is price "inflation" for key components of a mobile phone, manufacturers can often only raise the price of the whole machine; in a market environment where competition is fierce and it is difficult to increase prices, another possible result is to "reverse" in terms of specifications. Industry sources say that this scene is likely to happen on the new generation of smartphones launched in 2026.
Due to the sharp increase in memory prices, machine manufacturers may have to reduce memory capacity to control costs under the pressure of price wars, even if new models with "more expensive prices but smaller memory" emerge.
South Korean whistleblower Lanzuk (screen name @yeux1122) revealed on Naver that the 16GB running memory models currently common in high-end models may gradually become "on the verge of extinction" in the future. On the contrary, the proportion of 4GB memory models is expected to increase significantly, while 12GB models are expected to shrink by about 40% and be replaced by 6GB/8GB models; the current mainstream 8GB model shipments may also be cut in half and replaced by 4GB/6GB combinations. This means that within the same price range, it may be more difficult for consumers to buy mobile phones with high memory configurations in the future.
This judgment echoes the latest report released by market research firm TrendForce. The agency predicts that memory prices will rise sharply again in the first quarter of 2026, putting heavy cost pressure on global terminal equipment manufacturers. In order to maintain competitiveness in the price game with Apple and other manufacturers, some brands have begun to find "cutting space" in hardware specifications: for example, reports indicate that Samsung plans to continue to use existing camera hardware on next year's Galaxy S26 in response to Apple's strategy of maintaining the same price on the basic iPhone 17 model.
The core reason for the tight memory market is the AI wave that has swept the world in the past two years. Demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) from enterprises and institutions has surged to support the expansion of computing power in data centers and AI servers, while memory chip manufacturers are shifting more production capacity and resources to more profitable enterprise-level products. With limited production capacity, consumer-grade DRAM resources are further squeezed, and prices are rising. Smartphones are naturally the first to bear the brunt.
It’s not just the mobile phone industry that’s affected, PCs and laptops are also not immune. Another TrendForce report shows that PC brands such as Dell and Lenovo have issued price increase notices to customers, with Dell predicting a price increase of between 15% and 20%, which may begin as early as mid-December. At the same time, chip giant Micron announced this month that it would withdraw from the consumer market and shut down its well-known Crucial storage and memory brand, further exacerbating market concerns about mid- to long-term price trends.
Some industry executives pointed out that memory chips already account for 15%–18% of the cost structure of PCs. As the weight of memory in material costs continues to rise, machine manufacturers are bound to re-examine their product pricing strategies, including both the pricing space for new models and the extent and pace of price reductions for older products. For consumers, they are likely to encounter a new normal when purchasing machines in the next year or two: prices may not necessarily rise significantly, but the memory configuration of products in the same price range will "regress" and become a more common option.