Smartphone prices rise as memory chip shortage pushes up costs, says Nothing CEO Carl Pei - Storyboard18

According to Nothing co-founder and CEO Carl Pei, the ongoing shortage of memory chips is driving up manufacturing costs across the smartphone industry, with price increases expected to persist into n... Read original →

The memory chip shortage is triggering structural strain across the smartphone tech stack: secondary components like SoCs and image sensors are being downgraded due to memory bandwidth and packaging constraints, undermining device performance trajectories. Geopolitical friction has inflated compliance costs, especially as U.S.-Japan-Netherlands export controls restrict mature-node expansions in Taiwan, China and mainland China, eroding DRAM/NAND capacity elasticity. In response, Samsung and Apple may push further premiumization to absorb costs, while mid-to-low-tier players like Xiaomi and Transsion face a lose-lose dilemma—raise prices and lose market share, or absorb losses. Over the next 12–24 months, three long-tail effects will crystallize: memory’s BOM share stabilizing above 40%, OEMs shifting to custom low-power memory designs to secure allocations, and emerging markets like India witnessing a price cliff that accelerates the exit of sub-$100 smartphones—marking the definitive end of the ‘volume-over-margin’ era in consumer electronics.