Counterpoint warns of rising retail prices for smartphones in 2026 as memory costs explode | Infinium-tech
Counterpoint Research’s memory price tracker shows that mobile RAM costs have increased 50% quarter-on-quarter, while NAND storage has increased more than 90% QoQ. “Higher retail prices are inevitable in 2026 as rising costs will be passed on to consumers,” warned analysts.
The rising cost of memory is having a significant impact on the Bill of Materials (BOM) of smartphones. Different levels are affected differently and low-cost phones (under $200) are most affected.
When building a typical low-end phone with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage, manufacturers have to spend 43% of the total BoM of the phone on memory. This is an increase of 25% compared to the previous quarter.
For a typical mid-ranger ($400-$600) with 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 made in Q1 – in Q2, the numbers are expected to be 20% and 16% respectively.
Smartphone memory cost share estimates across different price segments (Source)
Premium and flagship phones ($800+) may have larger margins to help absorb the impact, but they also face an additional problem – flagship 2nm chipsets are quite expensive.
Counterpoint estimates BoM costs will increase by $100-$150 in the second quarter for phones with 16GB LPDDR5X HKMG RAM and 512GB UFS 4.1 storage. This means that the share of RAM in the BOM will be 23% and the share of storage will be 18%.
As mentioned in the first paragraph, retail prices are expected to increase – Counterpoint estimates that low-end phones will become about $30 more expensive, while premium phones will increase in price by $150 to $200.
“Memory price increases are having a structural impact on smartphone BOM costs. In 2026, OEMs will struggle to balance component costs, gross margins and shipment targets. Those that rely heavily on entry-level models to increase market share will face a significant risk of short-term losses.” Senior analyst Shenghao Bai writes.
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