Phones that were already on shelves went up in price by 15% on average in 2026, and some models nearly doubled. That is from Counterpoint Research's Global Smartphone Price Increase Tracker, published on 3 September 2026, and the cause it names is memory: prices for the chips that hold your apps and photos have risen fourfold since Q4 2025.
If you have spent years watching last year's flagship get cheaper every month, this breaks the rule you learned. Here is how a part you never see ends up on the price tag.
The usual curve, and why it bent
Normally a phone launches at its highest price and drifts down. The parts inside it get cheaper as factories improve, and the maker can cut the price and still keep its margin.
That only works while the bill of materials goes down. In a phone, two big lines on that bill are DRAM (the working memory) and NAND flash (the storage). When those two jump, the maker of a phone that is already on sale has three options: eat the cost, raise the price, or quietly ship less memory in the next batch.
According to Counterpoint, they did all three. Over 40% of smartphone models had a price increase so far in 2026, which the firm calls a first for the industry. New launches were 25% more expensive than the models they replaced a year earlier. And makers started trimming specs: "lower storage capacities, reduced camera configurations and the reintroduction of 4G models in select price segments."
The warning signs were there in January. Counterpoint's Q4 2025 market report said the average selling price had passed $400 in a single quarter for the first time, up 8% year on year, with "higher Bill of Materials (BOM) costs" and "the ongoing memory shortages" in the mix. Research Director Tarun Pathak expected a "continued rise in ASPs supported by ... DRAM/NAND price hikes." That was the forecast. The September tracker is what it looked like in shops.
We made a short, dramatized version of this as a story about a man who keeps telling his wife to wait for a cheaper phone (the people are invented, the numbers are Counterpoint's):
Where it hurts most
The rise is not the same everywhere. From the same tracker:
| Market | Rise in existing phone prices, 2026 |
|---|---|
| India | 21% |
| Asia Pacific | 19% |
| Middle East and Africa | 18% |
| China | 10% |
| Europe | 7% |
| US | 5% |
| Global average | 15% |
The pattern makes sense once you think about margins. A cheap phone has very little room between what its parts cost and what it sells for, so a memory spike has to go straight to the price or the spec sheet. Price-sensitive markets, where most phones sold are budget and mid-range, took the biggest hits. In the US and Europe, more phones are premium or sold through carriers, and Counterpoint says financing, trade-in deals and instalment plans are softening the blow there.
One exception stands out: Counterpoint says Apple has kept iPhone prices steady so far. That may not last. Senior Analyst Karn Chauhan: "Prices for new smartphones are expected to keep rising over the coming quarters, including for the upcoming iPhone 18 series. Memory shortages and elevated component costs are expected to persist in the near term."
What the memory side looks like
The other end of this story is the companies that sell the memory. Samsung makes DRAM, including the LPDDR type used in phones. Its Q3 2026 earnings guidance (8 October 2026) puts consolidated operating profit at about 107.40 trillion won, against 12.17 trillion won in the same quarter of 2025.
Be careful with that number. It is company-wide, and the guidance gives no breakdown and no reason for the jump. It sits next to the memory price rise; this release alone does not prove one caused the other.
What I would take from it
Counterpoint says buyers are already reacting: delaying upgrades, picking lower-storage models and turning to refurbished phones. For you, the practical points are:
- "Wait and it gets cheaper" assumes falling part costs. While memory stays expensive, waiting can cost you more, not less.
- Check the storage on the new model before you compare prices. Some phones now come with less of it for the same money.
- If your current phone works, keeping it is the one option the memory market cannot reprice.
What I would like to track next is how fast the curve flips back once memory supply catches up: do phone prices fall as quickly as they rose, or does the higher price stay? If you have watched a past memory cycle play out in phone or laptop prices, I would like to hear how long the way down took.
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