The price increase in the storage chip has reached the smartphone。
On the night of december 25thMiThe flagship phone 17 ultra was recently released and the price of the whole series of 17 ultra was raised for millet owing to, inter alia, the increase in the price of storage chips. Of these, the initial storage configuration was adjusted to 12gb+512gb, with the starting price set at $699, an increase of $500 over the previous generation (12gb+256gb), while the sale price of 16gb+512g was $749 for millimetres, an increase of $500 for the same configuration as the previous generation, and an increase of $700 for 16gb+1tb 17 ultra, an increase of $8499。
Since this year, storage chip prices have continued to rise and supplies are inadequate, putting considerable pressure on consumer electronics, especially mobile phone companies。
In a live broadcast prior to the launch, mi group partners and ceo lou wei bing gave a shot at the price increase for the new machine, “the price of the mi 17 ultra series will rise and rise slightly”. According to luway ice, the significant increase in memory prices has put a very heavy strain on the pricing of millet 17 ultra。
He said, "in fact, when mi15 ultra, i said that 6499 was the last time we had, at that time we did not take into account memory at all (the price increase), except for the increase in processor costs and the increase in camera configuration, but today we added memory (the price increase). The significant increase in memory costs is well above the increase in processors, camera configuration costs. So this time we're under great pressure to price."
According to idc, in 2024, the number of millet cell phones delivered was 168 million, the third highest in the world. Small rice of this size should be stored by large customers of large chip plants, but it is not possible to obtain more favourable storage chips at present。
Luway ice claims that ai has been an explosive growth over the past three years, resulting in a large number of production capacity to be hpc (high performance calculations). Previously, mobile phones were the most important demand side of the entire memory, but now high-performance computing needs exceed mobile phones。
According to luway ice, memory costs will rise between 2025 and 2027。
Earlier, the vice-president of iqoo productions in vivo's brand of electronic phone competitions, rosine, in an interview with journalists, also responded to the impact of higher prices of stored chips on product pricing. He stated that the storage price increase had an impact on the entire industry and had an impact on product pricing.” for iqoo, one is a screen and the other is storage, where price increases affect not only the price of new products at their initial launch, but also the price of subsequent entire life cycles, for example, during the big push.” rowers say that the price of flagship products in previous years has been more favourable, but has been much less aggressive because of higher storage prices, leading to lower promotion prices, which has affected the sales pace of the product's life cycle, as well as the availability of goods, and it is difficult for companies to control price trends. The only thing that can be done is to make the product sufficiently good and not have the means to deal with industry-specific price increases。
Indeed, between september and october of this year, the flagship mobile phones of the major manufacturers have been raised slightly. For example, the vivo x200 series rose by approximately $300; the oppo find x8 series rose by about $200 and the glory magic7 series by about $100。
Faced with the sensitive issue of increasing the price of storage chips, mobile phone companies have chosen to respond in silence and have been reluctant to speak openly about the impact of such increases on companies。
A mobile phone trader who was reluctant to reveal his name said that if the price of a terminal did not rise at the current price increase for the stored chip, his cell phone brand would lose next year. “this is an industrial dilemma, not a question of which, even if there had been a long contract, it would always have expired and the new contract might have been at a new price.” he indicated。
In an interview with journalists, idc’s chinese research manager, guo tianshang, stated that the new generation of flagship products from chinese manufacturers in september-october of this year had been generally priced up and was expected to continue to do so next year。
“but the rise in the prices of andre's flagship products is becoming smaller and smaller, and some consumers are turning to the purchase of apples, with less likely price increases, based on apple control over costs and maori space, especially in the chinese market.” guo xianxian suggests that china's counter-cyclical price reduction for mate80 has also put more pressure on other andre's flagships。
On november 25, this year, china launched a sale price reduction of $800 for the new machine mate 80 series。
The effect of increased storage chips on mobile phones at different price segments, according to guo tianshang, is that next year the medium-end mobile phones will also increase prices, which will be less than higher-end products, but will also cause some consumers to delay switching. Low-end products have the greatest cost pressure and there is no more room for manufacturers to compress costs, and some manufacturers reduce product lines and volumes for low-end products。
“for mobile phone manufacturers, the first priority now is to ensure storage supplies next year, followed by price negotiations. Even when some manufacturers are at the price negotiation stage, long-term price lockouts for the coming year have not been achieved. The storage price increase is expected to last around the first half of next year, with prices maintained for some time thereafter, and it may be possible to reduce prices after the release of new capacity by 2027.” guo shang expects that the overall size of the mobile phone market will shrink next year, with a positive impact on the brand, but with greater pressure on small brands to survive。
Recently, a third-party trendforce consulting concluded that global markets continued to face uncertainty in 2026, with inflation continuing to disrupt consumer market performance and, more crucially, that the memory was moving into a robust upswing cycle, leading to higher overall machine costs and forcing terminal pricing upwards, thereby impacting the consumer market。
Based on this, the global production of smartphones and laptops in 2026, under the advice of the state of trendforce, is projected to increase by 0. 1 per cent and 1. 7 per cent per year, to decrease by 2 per cent and 2. 4 per cent per year, respectively. In addition, there is a projected risk of further downward repairs to the production and delivery of goods in the event of an increase in the supply and demand imbalance of storage units or a higher than anticipated increase in the price of final sales。
