{"id":319263,"date":"2026-02-27T01:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/319263\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T01:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:29:09","slug":"smartphone-market-set-for-biggest-ever-decline-in-2026-on-memory-price-surge-idc-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/319263\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartphone market set for biggest-ever decline in 2026 on memory price surge, IDC says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Feb 26 (Reuters) &#8211; The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026, sinking to a more than decade \u200clow in shipments, as surging memory chip prices drive up device costs, \u200cthe International Data Corporation said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Smartphone shipments are expected to drop 12.9% to 1.12 billion units, \u200bthe research firm said in a report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">The decline will hit low-end Android manufacturers the hardest, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/organizations\/apple\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:Apple;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple<\/a> and Samsung are positioned to gain market share as smaller rivals struggle or exit the market entirely, the report said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">&#8220;What we are witnessing is not a \u200ctemporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like \u2060shock originating in the memory supply chain,&#8221; said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for Worldwide Client Devices at IDC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">A rapid build-out of \u2060AI infrastructure by tech firms such as Meta, Google and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/organizations\/microsoft\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:Microsoft;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft<\/a> has captured much of the memory chips supply, lifting prices as manufacturers prioritize components for higher-margin data centers \u200bover consumer \u200bdevices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Memory chips, or DRAM, are crucial to \u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/tech.yahoo.com\/phones\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:smartphones;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">smartphones<\/a> as they allow power-hungry applications \u200cto run smoothly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">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<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Apple and Samsung, with stronger balance sheets and premium positioning, are better positioned, IDC said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">It expects the average selling price of smartphones to surge 14% to a \u200crecord $523 this year, as manufacturers shift toward higher-margin \u200bmodels to offset ballooning costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">IDC expects a modest \u200b2% recovery in 2027 as \u200bthe crisis eases, followed by a 5.2% rebound in 2028, though \u200cit said that the market was \u200bunlikely to return to \u200bprevious norms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">&#8220;The memory crisis will cause more than a temporary decline; it marks a structural reset of the entire market,&#8221; said Nabila Popal, senior research \u200bdirector at IDC&#8217;s Mobile Phone \u200cTracker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">She warned that the sub-$100 smartphone segment, representing 171 million devices, \u200bwill become &#8220;permanently uneconomical&#8221; even after memory prices stabilize by mid-2027.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">(Reporting by Kritika \u200bLamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb 26 (Reuters) &#8211; The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[148723,148722,61,148721,60,202,80,148724],"class_list":["post-319263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-apple-and-samsung","tag-device-costs","tag-ie","tag-international-data-corporation","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-worldwide-client-devices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}