{"id":493750,"date":"2026-02-27T14:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/493750\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T14:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:14:11","slug":"dram-shortage-will-cause-seismic-shift-in-smartphone-market-but-apple-will-be-less-affected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/493750\/","title":{"rendered":"DRAM Shortage Will Cause ‘Seismic Shift’ in Smartphone Market, But Apple Will Be Less Affected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global memory scarcity will cause a 13 percent drop in smartphone sales in 2026, according to IDC (via Bloomberg<\/a>). DRAM is in short supply because AI companies are buying huge quantities of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for servers in data centers, and manufacturers are prioritizing HBM instead of the memory used in consumer devices.<\/p>\n

\"iphone
IDC says that the global memory supply has been drained into next year, putting smartphone makers in a tough spot. Prices have spiked because there’s not enough memory to meet production needs, which will cause a smartphone market “crisis like no other.”<\/p>\n

Smartphone makers are expected to ship 1.1 billion devices in 2026, down from 1.26 billion in 2025.<\/p>\n

“The tariffs and pandemic crisis seem a joke compared to this,” said IDC Senior Research Director Nabila Popal. “The smartphone market will witness a seismic shift by the time this crisis is over — in size, average selling prices and competitive landscape. We don’t expect the situation to ease up until mid-2027, at least.”<\/p>\n

Cheap Android smartphones will be impacted most heavily by increasing DRAM costs, but Apple is well-positioned to avoid major impact because it focuses on more expensive, premium devices. Apple has more profit margin to work with and is better able to secure available DRAM supply.<\/p>\n

Apple is expected to absorb higher memory costs<\/a> in the short term, but it isn’t unaffected by the shortages. Just today, a report suggested Apple is paying Samsung twice as much<\/a> for the LPDDR5X memory chips that it needs for producing iPhone 17<\/a> models.<\/p>\n

During Apple’s January earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook<\/a> said that memory price increases had a “minimal impact” on Apple’s gross margin during the 2025 holiday quarter, but the company is expecting a “bit more of an impact” during the first calendar quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n

IDC says that even when the DRAM shortage is resolved, memory prices are not expected to return to 2025 levels, so there could be a permanent shift toward higher-priced smartphones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global memory scarcity will cause a 13 percent drop in smartphone sales in 2026, according to IDC (via…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[108101,165,74],"class_list":["post-493750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-idc","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}