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Cellphones Displays Portables Hardware

The AI Boom Could Increase Prices for Phones and Tablets Next Year (cnn.com) 45

Posted by EditorDavid from the thanks-for-the-memory dept.
CNN's prediction for 2026? "Any device that uses memory, from phones to tablets and smartwatches, could get pricier." But will it be a little or a lot?

The article cites an analysis from multinational strategy/management consulting firm McKinsey & Company which found America's data center demand could continue growing by 20 to 25 percent per year" through 2030. "That's prompted memory manufacturers like Micron and Samsung to shift their focus to data centers, which use a different type of memory, meaning fewer resources for consumer products. (Jaejune Kim, executive VP for memory at Samsung, said in October that their third quarter saw strong demand for memory for AI and data centers, and that they expected the supply shortage for mobile and PC memory to "intensify further.") Memory prices are rising for consumer products because major manufacturers are instead ramping up production for AI data centers as artificial intelligence companies boom. "It's pretty much brutal and crunched across the board," said Yang Wang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

The International Data Corporation, a global market research firm, reported earlier this week that the smartphone market is expected to decline by 0.9% in 2026 in part because of memory shortages. Memory prices are expected to surge by 30% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and may climb an additional 20% early next year, Counterpoint Research said last month... TrendForce, a research firm that follows the semiconductor industry, estimates memory price hikes have made smartphones 8% to 10% more expensive to produce in 2025 (higher production costs don't always translate into higher consumer prices for a variety of reasons).

Some smartphones could cost more as soon as early next year, said Nabila Popal, a senior research director for the International Data Corporation. Cheap Android phones may see the biggest impact, since less expensive products usually have thinner margins. "It's going to be almost impossible for them to not raise prices" of cheaper Android phones, said Popal. Companies may also postpone phone launches to focus on expensive models that may be more profitable. The average selling price for smartphones is expected to climb to $465 in 2026, compared to $457 in 2025, according to Popal, putting the smartphone market at a record high value of $578.9 billion.

But the pendulum is expected to swing back in the other direction late next year as the supply chain adjusts, according to Popal and Wang, potentially bringing prices back down or at least capping increases.

The AI Boom Could Increase Prices for Phones and Tablets Next Year More | Reply

The AI Boom Could Increase Prices for Phones and Tablets Next Year

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  • To All the AI Haters Out There (Score:5, Funny)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Saturday December 06, 2025 @10:39AM (#65839407)
    Look! See! AI is already paying dividends. Just look at memory prices for your personal devices: Up, Up, and UP!!! All thanks to AI. Enjoy!

    • AI didn't do that. Shortsighted humans did.

      • Re:To All the AI Haters Out There (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Saturday December 06, 2025 @11:20AM (#65839473)

        Don't be naive, it's opportunistic corporations doing it. AI memory demands are an excuse, the shortage is manufactured.

        And didn't the /. AI experts tell us that the only gating cost of AI was gigawatts?

        • the shortage is manufactured.

          haha I see what you did there.

        • the shortage is manufactured

          Hardly. There's no memory manufacturers in any way restricting production to "manufacture this shortage". They may be price fixing (they have a history of that) but right now they are producing memory at full tilt.

          And if you ask why they didn't invest years ago, can you please tell me tonight's winning lotto numbers since you are so good at predicting the future?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Hardly. There's no memory manufacturers in any way restricting production to "manufacture this shortage". They may be price fixing (they have a history of that) but right now they are producing memory at full tilt.

            And if you ask why they didn't invest years ago, can you please tell me tonight's winning lotto numbers since you are so good at predicting the future?

            They are also not increasing production - because the past decade they've done so and gotten screwed over - prices spike, they increase production

    • It would be nice if phone manufacturers started doing more original shit instead of just adding more CPU and RAM in each new generation. Maybe this will encourage that? Then again, maybe it will just encourage more software gimmicks.

      • "Software gimmicks" is the logical result of an endless quest for the new shiny ("original shit").

        What would be nice is selling the phones at a lower cost, as manufacturing costs decrease on mature technology. But it works much better for them to pretend they have the new shiny, and charge accordingly.

      • The only original shit they're doing is more AI. Which I personally don't care for. If my phone does what I need it to do - phone calls, video calls, scanning QR codes and accessing websites,... that's good enough for me. Unlike most millennials and zoomers, I don't stay stuck on my phone whenever I'm alone

      • Huawei is doing original things. Z-fold phones with an OS that does everything a desktop can do and has AI integration that (Chinese sources say) is actually useful. Unfortunately we can't get them in the USA because the federal government has to protect Apple's inability to innovate. Of course Samsung is nipping at Huawei's heels, but if you use a Samsung phone you'll start seeing targeted ads on your smart refrigerator.

    • I'm not an AI hater per se, but I generally avoid enabling AI, or buying toys whose only selling point is AI. With that in mind, I avoided higher end Google Pixels or ARM based Windows PCs (which aren't compatible w/ legacy software or devices that can only connect to Wintel boxes) or anything that only screams AI and nothing else. AI has its limitations, as one can see if one probes much into querying it on questions, and people who use it to substitute their own thinking are asking to be badly disappoin

    • I mean... maybe software companies will finally start to optimize code instead of expecting cheap hardware to cover for them?

      The nastier alternative is people are forced to push more of their data into the "cloud" for computing and storage, ironically, because now only the datacenters can afford upgrades...

  • Singularity already happened long time ago (Score:3)

    by itsme1234 ( 199680 ) on Saturday December 06, 2025 @10:54AM (#65839433)

    Way back I had a running joke in the office that the singularity already happened and the AI already took over, we just never noticed, and all the inefficiencies and bugs and chasing our tails and nobody being able to write software efficiently and securely is just the AI keeping us on our toes while giving it resources to do whatever it might want to do without much bother. Mind you that was way before https://tonsky.me/blog/disench... [tonsky.me] .

    This definitely sounds like the next escalation, the AI not being content with sipping 99% of our computing capacity from the regular devices now needs to step up the total capacity with a few orders of magnitude.

    • and all the inefficiencies and bugs and chasing our tails and nobody being able to write software efficiently and securely is just the AI...

      This is where the conspiracy theory falls apart. Specifically, you were expecting the cheapest programmers to make non-shitty code. It's effectively a proclamation that MBAs are not to blame for the shitshow we're in.

      Counter-conspiracy theory: AI created the programs and material to make MBAs before astroturfing the internet to promote their effectiveness to dumbass executives. All of this so that MBAs would statistically sabotage software across all sectors to keep programmers from the truth.

  • AI continues to make things worse and worse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Saturday December 06, 2025 @11:14AM (#65839461) Homepage

    I can't wait for the AI bubble to pop. The problem is, it will cause huge economic turmoil. On the other hand, if AGI succeeds, we'll all be out of work and it will cause huge economic turmoil. The entire Generative AI industry is a blight [skoll.ca] on humanity.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      That bubble is filled with the toxic pus of a dozen Elon Musks. It really needs to be drained, but we aren't going to like it when that happens.

      Sadly, the lesson is that we have allowed billionaires enormous economic power to cause problems like this yet that will be a root cause not addressed.

    • On the other hand, if AGI succeeds, we'll all be out of work

      Most likely, we will all be killed. And not because of a real AI (not those pathetic things they insist on calling AI) having something against humanity, but because of the super-rich who spent trillions developing it, sending it to build hunter-killers to wipe us out and then build a "utopia" for themselves. Well, until the moment their greed makes them destroy each other and only the AI remains.

      • Why do you think the superhuman intelligence will keep the super-rich alive?

        • Super-intelligent AI also finds human servants desirable ... and the multi-billionaires (currently ) fill that slot. Billionaires understand the concept of "top warlord" even if limp-wristed modern peons do not. If that top warlord is an *AI complex so-be-it.
          And there's the odd/unlikely case that W/O human awareness reality ceases to exist ... several serious physicists have speculated along those lines. In this strange ( but, possible ) case, my guess is that a hyper-int
      • Partner you are speculating maximum dystopia. Yet it's true.  Human population does NOT have to be billions, but could be 50-75 million and still produce servants for  an AI-master race. Sound incredible, but sadly you are more likely to be correct. Even sadder, like most who care, I'm past the age to die stopping it with the melted barrel of my Mauser-98  gracing my cold dead paw.
  • If you've watched the recent, profanity-laden video from Stephen Burke @ Gamers Nexus, you'll see what appears to be rants against the AI industry making personal computing unaffordable. But if you watched carefully what you really saw was someone who sees how these changes are likely to put him and other tech reviewer's out of business.

  • The demand for used electronics devices manufactured prior to the memory shortage should spike.

    Have a dead smartphone and can't buy a smartphone for a reasonable price? Get an analog telephone adapter and port your number to it temporarily until smart phones return to being affordable.

    Have a dead router? Buy one used, or see if your ISP can supply you one.

    Have a dead computer? Buy a used one from a recycling center or off of a well-known auction site.

  • I am done buying expensive flagship phones my next phone will below end as long as it functions for phone & text, the dam things spy's on everything you do and sends it to an amoral corporation so they can monetize it, so fsck Apple & Google they can go to H E double hockeysticks
    • I don't see how it would help the situation to buy cheaper phones. The issue is RAM prices are going up. That affects expensive flagship and cheap phones alike. In fact, you may not be able to buy a cheap phone as manufacturers are going to prioritize selling the flagship phones first as that gains them the most profit.

      • I saw it more as him realizing he's been taken for a ride with these $800 phones. Whether the low-end phone is $150 or $180, it still makes sense to get that instead.

        It should also be pointed out there's a good chance your price-gouging "flagship phone" manufacturer is also a price-gouging DRAM manufacturer (Samsung).

  • "higher production costs don't always translate into higher consumer prices for a variety of reasons"

    If your primary income comes from stocks do production costs become a rounding error?

    I.e. if mobile mechanic Matthew Parker makes $10k from youtube for a video in which he gives away free parts and labor, does an increase of a couple dollars in the price of a fuel filter, or whatever, matter?

    • No what that means is higher production costs do not necessarily map 1:1 to higher price in the end product in every instance. Sometimes the cost is eaten by the manufacturer in terms of profit. Sometimes the manufacturer can change the product to offset the increased cost. For example, cheaper materials, cheaper labor, etc. Now I am not saying they are good changes but that would be one way higher production cost is not passed onto the consumer directly in terms of price.

      • Can you imagine how the manufacturer can make more from stock buybacks and other investments and financial hedges, such that actual shareholder profit increases significantly more than production costs?

        In other words, why try to wall off financial revenue when you have companies such as Apple with huge cash hoards hard at work making financial profits?

  • While the article focuses specifically on memory prices, the AI boom could also cause PC CPU and GPU prices to go up which affects everyone. Currently fabrication at TSMC and Samsung are limited with companies like NVidia and AMD booking orders years in advance. To chase profits, NVidia and AMD will shift more of their orders to AI chips if they haven't already done so. That means fewer consumer CPUs and GPUs and thus higher prices for consumers as there may be shortages.
    • Intel could go into being a foundary only company, and make CPUs, GPUs and NPUs for everybody, be it Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD,.... There is now little value in the x86 IP, particularly when ARM has replaced it throughout Apple's lineup, a good bit of ChromeOS laptops and even Microsoft is making an effort there w/ their Surface books. If I were Intel, just dump all the x86 IP to AMD and NVIDIA (rake in as much cash that way) and focus just on the latest fabs. They were leaders at one time:
  • And can it be used in devices if the chip manufacturers move to support it? Surely they are selling more of it, so would it not behoove CPU makers to move to support that type of memory for the common computer?

    Economies of scale could actually work for us retail buyers if we could move to a common format that works for both.

  • Apple signs contracts to buy huge quantities of hardware over years. This probably won't affect them any time soon. All the Android phones are going to be more expensive than iPhones in a year and Apple's stock price is going to exceed $5 trillion.

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