- RAM crisis will lead to ‘seismic’ changes to phones, says new report
- This means a price hike and a change in specifications
- Changes could be lasting and potentially permanent
If you’re considering upgrading your computer, it’s been hard to avoid news of rapidly rising component prices caused by the current RAM shortage. The impact on all the top phones has been less clear, but a new report has highlighted how drastically this could affect the smartphone world in the coming months.
The report comes from technology analysts IDC (via Bloomberg) and makes for rather grim reading. According to IDC, the global smartphone market will shrink by 12.9% in 2026, triggering an “unprecedented crisis” in the industry. Indeed, IDC says past upheavals pale in comparison, saying “tariffs and the pandemic crisis seem like a joke next to this.”
The outlook for consumers is rather bleak. In response to the memory shortage, Bloomberg says smartphone makers are “getting a handle on specifications, eliminating unprofitable entry-level models and pushing consumers to buy more high-end devices.”
And it may not be a temporary change either. Nabila Popal, senior research director at IDC, believes that “the smartphone market will experience a seismic shift by the end of this crisis – in terms of size, average selling prices and competitive landscape.”
For its part, Bloomberg estimates that the current situation will last until 2027 and that “even when supply is replenished, a return to old price structures now seems unlikely”.
Bad news, especially for Android
The current RAM crisis has been driven by the extreme demands of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, which has cornered most of the component supply for its data center needs, and is now having a knock-on effect on consumer devices.
As Bloomberg puts it: “Demand for advanced memory to power artificial intelligence tasks has exhausted global supply until next year and is now putting the business models of many smartphone makers at risk.” »
The state of the industry is particularly bad for Android phones, where profit margins tend to be thin and prices are often low. IDC noted that entry-level devices could be particularly affected, as memory represents a larger share of manufacturers’ costs in this market segment. Companies like Lenovo and Xiaomi have already warned that prices could rise.
High-end companies like Apple could weather the storm better because their higher profit margins could allow them to absorb more of the cost increases instead of passing them on to consumers. That said, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently admitted that the supply shortage could have “a little bit more of an impact” than last year, raising questions about whether the company will need to raise prices.
IDC is not the only research firm to adopt this pessimistic view. For example, Counterpoint analysts recently claimed that “2026 is shaping up to be the worst year in smartphone history” due to a “large-scale supply shock” triggered by the RAM shortage.
IDC’s Popal struck a gloomy tone, adding: “The days of cheap smartphones are over, because even when the crisis is over, we don’t expect memory prices to fall back to 2025 levels.” According to Bloomberg, some 170 million phones costing less than $100 were sold in 2025 – an entire segment that now appears “unprofitable to maintain.”
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