The supply shortage caused by the surge in global memory demand is profoundly affecting all walks of life. The smartphone market also requires a large number of memory chips. The current situation is very difficult for medium-sized and smaller smartphone manufacturers.
These manufacturers' own product pricing and profit margins are not as high as Apple's. Now that memory chip prices have increased, material costs have increased and profit margins have declined. If the price of smartphones is to be increased, it will inevitably affect sales. Therefore, they can only lower profit margins or reduce other hardware configurations to reduce costs.
The latest report released by market analyst Counterpoint Research states that larger smartphone manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung are able to cope with rising memory chip costs, but even so global smartphone sales are expected to fall by 2.1% in 2026.
It was previously reported that the Samsung Smartphone Division wanted to find the Samsung Semiconductor Division to sign an annual agreement to avoid rising memory chip prices, because this would eat into the profits of the Samsung Smartphone Division. However, the Samsung Semiconductor Division directly refused the agreement and was only willing to sign a quarterly agreement and did not give the Mobile Phone Division the opportunity to stock up.
The analyst believes that Apple and Samsung are currently the companies in the smartphone market that are most capable of coping with the surge in memory chip prices, but they can only cope with it for a few quarters, while other companies that do not have so much room for maneuver to balance market share and profit margins will have a very difficult time, which will ultimately cause end product prices to rise.
Apple will bear higher memory chip costs in the short term without immediately adjusting retail prices, while other smartphone manufacturers are bound to increase prices to balance costs. Therefore, Counterpoint Research predicts that the average price of smartphones will increase by 6.9% next year, and OEMs will also guide consumers to purchase high-end models with higher profit margins to obtain more profits.