Huawei's Richard Yu warns of smartphone price hikes as memory costs soar

The sharp rise in memory costs is severely impacting the global smartphone supply chain, particularly pressuring high-end brands like Huawei. The upward trend in upstream chip pricing has already reached midstream manufacturers, squeezing profit margins. If manufacturers cannot pass costs onto consumers, they risk significant losses. From a compliance perspective, geopolitical tensions are intensifying supply chain risks, especially amid U.S.-China tech decoupling, making the semiconductor capacity in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, China pivotal to strategic competition. Competitors such as Apple and Samsung may adopt differentiated pricing strategies to preserve margins, while mid-to-low-end products could accelerate market exit. In the medium term, price segmentation will intensify, and manufacturers will increasingly shift toward domestic supply chains, accelerating local memory technology development. This event underscores the urgency of semiconductor self-reliance and signals a structural adjustment phase characterized by higher costs and barriers to entry.