Memory sticks have been hyped up to be like "black gold bars", and it's very likely that the prices of both mobile phones and laptops will increase.

On November 17th, the latest survey by TrendForce showed that the global market will still face uncertainties in 2026. Especially, as the memory market enters a strong upward cycle, the cost of finished devices will rise, forcing up the terminal pricing and thus impacting the consumer market.

Based on this, TrendForce has revised down its production and shipment forecasts for global smartphones and laptops in 2026. The previous year-on-year growth forecasts of 0.1% and 1.7% have been adjusted down to year-on-year declines of 2% and 2.4% respectively. If the imbalance between supply and demand of memory worsens, or the increase in terminal selling prices exceeds expectations, there is still a risk of further downward revisions to the production and shipment forecasts.

The agency said that the rise in smartphone memory prices in 2025 was mainly driven by DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory). In the fourth quarter of 2025, the DRAM contract price increased by more than 75% compared with the same period last year. Estimating that memory accounts for about 10% - 15% of the BOM cost (Bill of Materials cost) of the whole device, this cost has been raised by 8% - 10% in 2025.

As the contract prices of DRAM and NAND Flash (Flash memory chips) continue to rise, it is estimated that the BOM cost of finished devices next year will increase by about 5% - 7% on top of this year's level, and it may even be higher. For low - end models with already thin profit margins, brand owners will surely reduce the proportion of such products and raise the terminal selling prices of the entire product line in a hierarchical manner to maintain normal operations.

Due to the continued tight supply of memory, TrendForce believes that it will be more difficult for smaller smartphone brands to obtain resources. It cannot be ruled out that the market will enter a new round of reshuffle, and the trend of the strong getting stronger will be more obvious.

The laptop market in 2026 also faces obvious pressure. Based on the cost structure before the memory price increase this year, DRAM and NAND Flash together account for about 10% - 18% of the BOM cost of a laptop. The agency expects that after such a significant and continuous quarterly increase, the proportion of memory in the BOM cost of the whole device will further expand to over 20%.

TrendForce said that if brands choose to pass on the cost, it is estimated that the terminal selling prices of laptops in 2026 will generally increase by 5% - 15%, exerting real pressure on demand. The low - price laptop market is also highly sensitive to price changes. It is expected that there will be cases of delaying device replacement or turning to the second - hand market. The replacement momentum in the mid - price market may slow down significantly, and both enterprise and household users tend to extend the service life of their devices. In addition, although the high - price market is relatively resilient, creators and e - sports users with limited budgets may still switch to lower - end configurations.

Since April this year, the prices of memory sticks in Huaqiangbei have soared. According to a report by Securities Times, the prices of various storage products here have generally doubled, and the prices of some models have tripled. The price of a certain memory stick has risen from about 1,000 yuan in April to 4,200 yuan currently. Due to the sharp rise in memory stick prices, some people have compared them to "black gold bars".

The soaring prices of storage products are closely related to the "major infrastructure" stage of global artificial intelligence data center construction. In China, large Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are continuously increasing their investment in computing power. The demand for high - end storage products from AI servers is 3 to 8 times that of ordinary servers, which has led to a tight supply of DRAM and NAND flash memory.

Meanwhile, the world's three major memory chip manufacturers - SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron - have shifted their production capacity to high - end products such as HBM and high - capacity DDR5 to protect their profits and gradually phased out traditional product lines such as DDR4, further exacerbating the supply gap in the mid - and low - end markets.

Against this background, the downstream consumer electronics sector has been significantly affected. When Xiaomi launched the Redmi K90 smartphone, its founder Lei Jun attributed the large price difference between different versions to the rising storage cost. And Lu Weibing, partner and president of Xiaomi Group, said, "We cannot change the trend of the global supply chain. The increase in storage cost is far higher than expected and will continue to intensify."

For mobile phone and laptop manufacturers, finding a balance between rising costs and market demand will be an important challenge in the coming period.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Jiemian News". Author: Song Jianan. Republished by 36Kr with permission.