Samsung to hike foldable phone price amid AI chip shortage - ET BrandEquity

Samsung's decision to raise foldable phone prices due to AI chip supply shortages highlights the severe challenges facing the semiconductor industry. As artificial intelligence technology rapidly deve... Read original →

Samsung’s foldable price hike isn’t just about AI chip shortages—it reveals a structural mismatch in advanced-node capacity allocation. Technically, AI workloads are migrating from data centers to edge devices, forcing mobile SoCs to integrate power-hungry NPUs, while TSMC and Samsung struggle with sub-3nm yield instability. On the compliance front, U.S. export controls on semiconductor equipment have raised Samsung’s procurement costs and licensing delays, eroding supply chain agility. Competitively, Apple may leverage its in-house A-series chips as a differentiator, while Chinese OEMs like Huawei and Xiaomi accelerate partnerships with SMIC and Cambricon to bypass bottlenecks. Over the next 12–24 months, this pricing shock will compel smartphone makers to either lock in costly foundry capacity or adopt chiplet-based heterogeneous integration to reduce reliance on leading-edge nodes. Supply chain resilience—not just cost efficiency—is now the new competitive baseline.