We\u2019ve been talking to phone companies both big and small this week at MWC, and they\u2019ve basically all agreed on one point: the RAM crisis is hitting hard, and phone prices will almost certainly increase where they haven\u2019t already.<\/p>\n
For a major global brand like Xiaomi, volume is one lever the company can pull. To balance out the increased costs, Angus Ng, Xiaomi\u2019s director of communications and public relations, tells us, \u201cWe can potentially go for bigger volumes, especially in the mid-range segment and entry-level segment, so then we can try to lower costs in that area.\u201c Pulling other levers, like scaling back flagship specs, isn\u2019t considered an option. Says Ng, \u201c\u2026we have to chase the latest and intend to showcase our best.\u201d The Xiaomi 17 and 17 Ultra<\/a> launching this week in Europe match last year\u2019s pricing<\/a>, but it sounds like that trend might not hold in the long term.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like trading stock\u201d<\/p>\n Pricing is so unpredictable that suppliers are treating RAM like the catch of the day. Kaiwei Tang, CEO and cofounder at Light, says the company survived a \u201chorrendous\u201d year last year thanks to tariff chaos, and now faces yet more uncertainty in the RAM crisis. Tang says that Foxconn, Light\u2019s supplier and phone manufacturer, laid out the reality a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can order memory, but they don\u2019t tell you how much it costs until the day they ship. So it\u2019s like trading stock.\u201d He says Light can still refuse the order, \u201cYes or no, they don\u2019t care if you don\u2019t want it,\u201d but that means they\u2019ll just turn to the next company in a long queue for the sale.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a kind of silver lining to be found, it\u2019s that everybody is feeling the pressure in one way or another. Says Stefan Streit, TCL\u2019s chief marketing officer for Europe, \u201cIt\u2019s not like somebody is excluded from it. Everybody has to deal with this difficult problem.\u201d Even in the face of some grim predictions<\/a> for the global smartphone market, Streit strikes a determined tone. \u201cWe have to take the challenge on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve been talking to phone companies both big and small this week at MWC, and they\u2019ve basically all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[166,165,172,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-503072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-gadgets","9":"tag-mobile","10":"tag-tech","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503072","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=503072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}