{"id":502679,"date":"2026-02-27T08:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T08:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/502679\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T08:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T08:36:12","slug":"smartphone-market-faces-biggest-decline-ever-in-2026-analysts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/502679\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartphone market faces biggest decline ever in 2026, analysts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A Huawei Mate 80 Pro smartphone during a product launch event in Madrid on Thursday.Violeta Santos Moura\/Reuters<\/p>\n

The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026, sinking to a more than decade low in shipments, as surging memory chip prices drive up device costs, the International Data Corporation said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Smartphone shipments are expected to drop 12.9 per cent to 1.12 billion units, the research firm said in a report.<\/p>\n

The decline will hit low-end Android manufacturers the hardest, while Apple and Samsung are positioned to gain market share as smaller rivals struggle or exit the market entirely, the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain,\u201d said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for Worldwide Client Devices at IDC.<\/p>\n

A rapid build-out of AI infrastructure by tech firms such as Meta, Google and Microsoft has captured much of the memory chips supply, lifting prices as manufacturers prioritize components for higher-margin data centres over consumer devices.<\/p>\n

Memory chips, or DRAM, are crucial to smartphones as they allow power-hungry applications to run smoothly.<\/p>\n

Analysts have said rising component costs will force budget-device focused companies to pass the expenses on to consumers, just as demand at higher price points is weakening.<\/p>\n

Apple and Samsung, with stronger balance sheets and premium positioning, are better positioned, IDC said.<\/p>\n

It expects the average selling price of smartphones to surge 14 per cent to a record US$523 this year, as manufacturers shift toward higher-margin models to offset ballooning costs.<\/p>\n

IDC expects a modest 2 per cent recovery in 2027 as the crisis eases, followed by a 5.2 per cent rebound in 2028, though it said that the market was unlikely to return to previous norms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe memory crisis will cause more than a temporary decline; it marks a structural reset of the entire market,\u201d said Nabila Popal, senior research director at IDC\u2019s Mobile Phone Tracker.<\/p>\n

She warned that the sub-US$100 smartphone segment, representing 171 million devices, will become \u201cpermanently uneconomical\u201d even after memory prices stabilize by mid-2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A Huawei Mate 80 Pro smartphone during a product launch event in Madrid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,190,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-502679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-mobile","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}