{"id":332956,"date":"2026-03-11T05:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T05:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/332956\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T05:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T05:52:08","slug":"counterpoint-warns-of-rising-retail-prices-for-smartphones-in-2026-as-memory-costs-explode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/332956\/","title":{"rendered":"Counterpoint warns of rising retail prices for smartphones in 2026 as memory costs explode"},"content":{"rendered":"

Counterpoint Research\u2019s Memory Price Tracker shows that mobile RAM costs have risen by 50% quarter-on-quarter, while NAND storage has gone up by over 90% QoQ. \u201cHigher retail prices are unavoidable in 2026 as rising costs will be passed to consumers,\u201d warn analysts.<\/p>\n

The rising memory costs are having quite an impact on the Bill of Materials (BoM) for smartphones. The different tiers are affected differently and low-end phones (sub-$200) are hit the hardest.<\/p>\n

When building a typical low-end phone with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage, manufacturers will have to spend a whopping 43% of the phone\u2019s total BoM on memory. This is an increase of 25% compared to the previous quarter.<\/p>\n

For a typical mid-ranger ($400-$600) with, say, 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage, the manufacturer will spend 15% more on RAM and 11% more on storage. And that is if the phone is built in Q1 \u2013 in Q2, the numbers are expected to be 20% and 16%, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"Smartphone
\nSmartphone Memory Cost Share Estimation in Different Price Segments (source<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Premium and flagship phones ($800+) may have bigger margins to help absorb the impact, but they also face an additional issue \u2013 flagship 2nm chipsets are quite pricey.<\/p>\n

Counterpoint estimates that BoM costs will rise by $100-$150 in Q2 for a phone with 16GB of LPDDR5X HKMG RAM<\/a> and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage. This means that RAM will account for 23% of the BoM and storage will account for 18%.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in the first paragraph, retail prices are expected to rise \u2013 Counterpoint is estimating that low-end phones will become around $30 more expensive, while premium phones will see price hikes of $150 to $200.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe memory price surge is delivering a structural impact to smartphone BoM costs. In 2026, OEMs will struggle to balance component costs, gross margins and shipment targets. Those who rely heavily on entry-level models to drive market share will face a significant risk of short-term losses,\u201d writes Senior Analyst Shenghao Bai.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Counterpoint Research\u2019s Memory Price Tracker shows that mobile RAM costs have risen by 50% quarter-on-quarter, while NAND storage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[85,46,321,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-332956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-mobile","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}