(Source: "People's Daily (Overseas version）》2026-03-19）
A few days ago, the 2026 Mobile World Congress was held in Barcelona, Spain. The picture shows people visiting the chip technology booth.
Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Cheng Min
At the Huawei Smart Life Center in Sanxia Plaza, Shapingba District, Chongqing, citizens are shopping for smartphones.
Photo by Sun Kaifang (People’s Vision)
Samsung’s new mobile phone Galaxy The starting prices of the S26 standard version and S26+ version have both increased by RMB 1,000, and the Ultra version has increased by RMB 300; OPPO’s official mall announced that it will adjust prices for some products on sale starting from March 16, 2026; VIVO Mobile Communications Company said that it was “affected by the continued sharp rise in global semiconductor and storage costs” and would adjust the recommended retail price of some products... Recently, global smartphones have ushered in a new round of price increases, triggering extensive discussions among netizens. Various forecasts show that the trend of rising mobile phone prices will be difficult to reverse in the short term. Why are mobile phone prices rising? The reporter conducted interviews and investigations on this matter and invited experts to interpret it.
The price of memory chips has soared, directly pushing up the cost of smartphones
A smartphone is composed of hundreds or even thousands of components: processor, screen, camera, battery... But the memory chip determines how fast the phone can run and how much stuff it can hold. A stable and high-performance storage system is the key to supporting the operation of mobile phones, and memory chips have therefore become one of the core components with the highest proportion in the cost structure of mobile phones.
“The price of memory has increased several times. "When reporters recently visited offline mobile phone experience stores in Beijing, many store clerks mentioned that the rising cost of memory chips is directly pushing up the selling price of mobile phones. A clerk at a brand experience store told reporters: "Every price will increase simultaneously, and the larger the storage space, the higher the increase may be. ”
Since October 2025, many mobile phone company executives or product line leaders have stated on Weibo that "the price increase of memory is too much, which affects the pricing of new products." At the beginning of 2026, topics such as "The price of memory sticks rose faster than gold bars" were on the hot search list, and "A box of memory sticks is as good as a house" was on the hot search list for more than 10 hours.
Data released by the Price Monitoring Center of the National Development and Reform Commission on February 28 shows that as of January 2026, the prices of DRAM (memory) and NAND flash memory, the two major global memory chip products, have reached their highest values since statistics were available in 2016. TrendForce, a global high-tech industry research organization, pointed out that taking the memory capacity of 8GB+256GB as an example, the estimated contract price in the first quarter of 2026 will increase by nearly 200% compared with the same period in 2025.
Why are memory chip prices soaring?
From the supply side, chip manufacturing is a typical "asset-heavy, long-cycle" industry. Pan Helin, a member of the Information and Communication Economy Expert Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that investment in chip manufacturing is huge and it will be difficult to expand rapidly in the short term. "Generally speaking, it takes about two years to build new storage capacity. However, many storage chip factories currently have equipment bottlenecks, and the actual release of capacity may take longer."
From the demand side, memory chips have extremely strong “demand rigidity”.Wang Zhimin, researcher at the National Institute for Opening up, w88 casinoAnalysis shows that the current memory chip market presents a typical tight pattern of “demand rigidity + supply rigidity”. Memory chips are the core components of modern electronic products. Mobile phones, computers, servers and other products are inseparable from them. The demand is inelastic - no matter how high the price is, manufacturers must purchase them, otherwise they cannot produce them. “When demand grows faster than supply, prices will rise; when demand grows faster than supply, prices will skyrocket.”
The rising prices of memory chips are gradually transmitted to consumer terminals. As consumers' preference for high-end and intelligent electronic products increases, they have higher requirements for memory performance. Manufacturers have limited room to alleviate the pressure of rising costs by reducing allocations, and increasing terminal prices has become a common trend.
The explosive growth of the global AI industry is the main reason, and memory chips are in short supply under multiple pressures
On February 20, global memory chip giant SK Hynix stated that the storage industry has fully entered a seller's market, and SK Hynix's memory chip inventory is at an extremely low level in history. Data shows that the annual production of global memory chips continues to grow, and many governments and companies continue to increase investment in the semiconductor industry.
The supply of memory chips is constantly increasing, why is the supply suddenly in short supply?
“The price increase of smartphones is not only an industry fluctuation, but also reflects the restructuring of the global high-tech industry structure and the trend of capital concentration in high-profit areas.”Wang ZhiminAnalysis shows that the price of a memory chip for an AI server is much higher than that of a mobile phone memory chip, and the profit disparity is huge. “With limited production capacity, suppliers will of course give priority to the areas with the highest profits. This is the law of the market. "The explosive growth of AI has brought huge demand for high-end memory chips, and the scale of this demand is reshaping the supply and demand pattern of the entire semiconductor industry.
Embodied intelligence is accelerating towards application scenarios, cutting-edge large models are intensively released, and many countries continue to increase investment in AI infrastructure... The global AI industry has entered a period of explosive growth. "Computing power is the basis of AI, and the core carrier of computing power is the server. AI servers need to process parallel calculations of massive data, and the demand for storage chips has increased exponentially." Pan Helin said that the surge in demand for AI computing power not only requires more storage chips, but also requires high-bandwidth memory (HBM) with higher performance and larger bandwidth. "Major memory manufacturers have therefore turned to the production of HBM to reduce the production of memory chips required for mobile phones and computers."
TrendForce data shows that about 70% of the world’s advanced storage production capacity is being swallowed up by the AI field, resulting in a shortage of mobile phone memory chips and rising prices. Data from the Price Monitoring Center of the National Development and Reform Commission show that memory chips are currently in an upward cycle. Looking at the year, driven by the continued growth in demand for AI server computing power, the global memory chip market will continue to be in short supply, and prices will continue to rise.
The explosion of AI demand is not the only driver of memory chip price increases. At the more upstream industrial chain level, raw material costs are also rising across the board. Data from the Price Monitoring Center of the National Development and Reform Commission show that since 2025, the prices of raw materials for manufacturing memory modules such as silicon wafers, tungsten hexafluoride, silver, and copper have generally increased. The rising costs of these basic materials have further intensified the price pressure on memory chips. The manufacturing of memory chips involves dozens of raw materials and hundreds of processes. Any increase in costs in any link will eventually be transmitted to the price of the finished product.
Wang Zhiminbelieves that this round of price increases has also superimposed structural changes in the global supply chain. Amid geopolitical and economic and w88 conflicts, industrial and supply chains have shifted from prioritizing efficiency to prioritizing safety, and industrial layout has shifted from pursuing global optimal costs to ensuring stability and security. "This refactoring itself adds cost because redundancy and backup come at a cost."
The differentiation of bargaining power accelerates industry reshuffle, and the supply chain model may usher in new opportunities
Up to now, mobile phone manufacturers’ price adjustments have mostly focused on mid- to low-end models. Some higher-priced models, represented by Apple, have not yet seen price increases or have seen a smaller increase.
"Small and medium-sized brands have weak bargaining power, thin inventory buffers, and difficult cost transmission. When upstream memory chip prices double and rise, they can neither obtain sufficient production capacity nor afford the cost of price increases, so they are most sensitive to cost increases."Wang Zhiminsaid that high-end brands rely on their huge purchasing volume and market influence to sign long-term and stable price-guaranteed agreements with core suppliers to lock in the price and supply of key components in the future. This means that even if memory prices soar in the market, the purchase prices of high-end brands will remain stable in the short term.
Wang Zhiminbelieves that cost pressure will accelerate the reshuffle of the industry, and brands that lack the ability to resist risks may be eliminated. However, it will also force the mobile phone industry to upgrade in multiple aspects such as product innovation and supply chain management.
“In the past decade or so, the mobile phone industry has gone through a typical path of ‘involution’. Manufacturers are willing to compress profit margins just to seize more market share. ”Wang Zhiminbelieves that low-price competition is a common strategy for many mobile phone brands in emerging markets. This round of cost pressure has forced manufacturers to shift from low prices and volume to value competition, and to absorb cost pressure through technological innovation, product differentiation, and brand effects, rather than blindly compressing profits. This is more conducive to fighting "involution" and promoting high-quality development of related industries.
For a long time, most mobile phone manufacturers around the world have adopted the spot model for purchasing memory chips, that is, buying as much as they need. This model has the lowest cost when the market is stable, but when prices surge, the risk is entirely borne by the downstream.Wang ZhiminAnalysis shows that this round of price increases may also give rise to a new cooperation model: shifting from spot procurement to long-term contracts.
“Similar to agriculture’s ‘order planting’, manufacturers sign long-term agreements with storage suppliers to lock in production capacity and prices in advance. ”Wang Zhiminsaid that this model has been implemented in some high-end mobile phone product lines. "Cost pressure forces manufacturers to establish a more stable supply chain mechanism, which not only helps smooth price fluctuations, but also enhances the resilience of the industry chain." For leading manufacturers, this is an opportunity to optimize supply chain management; for small and medium-sized manufacturers, it is also a possible direction for survival.
Since the price of international memory chips has risen, the attractiveness of the quotations of China's domestically substituted memory chip manufacturers has become relatively more attractive. Industry insiders revealed that the number of inquiries for some domestically substituted chip products has increased significantly in the past two weeks, and some domestic mobile phone brand procurement teams have begun to reassess the proportion of domestically produced chips.
Wang Zhiminpointed out that the supply security of memory chips is directly related to the stability of the entire industry, and China is accelerating the construction of an independent and controllable semiconductor ecosystem. "China has a complete industrial system, a large high-quality labor force and strong infrastructure supporting capabilities, and has the ability to build a regional supply chain network to cope with uncertainty."
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