Will the collective price increase of electronic products last throughout 2026? Is AI to blame?
In the past six months, the prices of electronic products have started to rise subtly.
Mobiles, computers, game consoles, solid-state drives, and even camera memory cards are significantly more expensive than last year. On March 10th, OPPO announced that it would raise the prices of some of its already released mobile phones starting from March 16th, directly attributing the reason to a key factor: the rising cost of storage chips. In fact, since the beginning of this year, many consumer electronics manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo, HP, and Dell, have successively adjusted the prices or configurations of their products: some computers have been downgraded from 16GB of memory to 8GB, and the starting prices of some new mobile phone models have increased by several hundred yuan.
If we only look at the terminal market, this seems to be just an ordinary price increase of electronic products. However, looking up the supply chain, the change comes from the upstream storage market. As inventories continue to decline and the production capacity of some high-end storage is locked in advance, the storage industry is gradually entering a seller's market.
Under such a supply - demand pattern, more and more institutions believe that this round of price increases for electronic products may not end soon and may even last throughout 2026.
01: Storage Price Increase, Electronic Products Become "More Expensive"
The price increase of electronic products first appeared in the two largest consumer electronics markets: mobile phones and computers.
On March 10th, OPPO announced that it would raise the prices of some of its already released products starting from March 16th, covering models in the OPPO A series, K series, and OnePlus. The company gave a very direct reason: the cost increase of many key mobile phone components, including high - speed storage hardware. Meanwhile, mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Honor, and Apple have also successively adjusted the pricing of their new products since the beginning of this year. In the PC market, major global computer manufacturers such as Lenovo, HP, Dell, ASUS, and Acer have also initiated price adjustment mechanisms.
The core reason for the price increase comes from the rapid rise in the price of upstream storage chips. Data released by the Price Monitoring Center of the National Development and Reform Commission on February 28th showed that as of January 2026, the global prices of DRAM and NAND Flash both reached the highest levels since 2016. Taking the mainstream DDR4 8Gb particles as an example, its spot price has risen from a low of $3.2 in 2025 to about $15, with a cumulative increase of 369%. This increase has far exceeded that of most electronic components and has begun to directly change the cost structure of finished products.
In the smartphone industry, memory has become the part with the fastest - growing cost. IDC data shows that in the past few years, memory usually accounted for only 10% - 15% of the total cost of a mobile phone, but now this proportion has increased to over 20%, and for mid - and low - end models, it is even close to 30%. Some mobile phones priced at around 1,000 yuan have already had negative gross margins. A report from TrendForce further pointed out that taking the mainstream configuration of 8GB + 256GB as an example, the memory cost in the first quarter of 2026 increased by nearly 200% year - on - year, about three times that of the same period last year. As the price continues to rise, the proportion of memory in the bill of materials for mobile phones has increased from the original 10% - 15% to 30% - 40% and is approaching 50%.
The increase in storage prices has quickly spread to the terminal market. Since the beginning of this year, the prices of many new mobile phone models have been significantly raised. The prices of models such as the Redmi K90 series and iQOO 15 have increased by 100 to 600 yuan. The starting price of the Honor Power2 (12GB + 256GB version) is 2,499 yuan, 500 yuan higher than the previous generation. There are also rumors in the market that vivo plans to raise the prices of all its mobile phone products starting from March 15th, with an overall increase of about 10% to 15%. Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi Group, also admitted in an interview with the media: "The cost pressure of memory chips is high. We try our best to digest these cost pressures through internal efficiency improvement to minimize the difficulty for consumers to accept the price increase."
Even Apple has not been completely immune to this round of cost shocks. At the earnings conference call at the end of January 2026, Apple's management said that the increase in storage prices would affect the company's gross profit margin in the future, and the company was evaluating multiple countermeasures, including long - term procurement contracts and product configuration optimization.
The PC market is also under similar pressure. HP disclosed in its first - quarter 2026 earnings report that the proportion of notebook computer memory cost has increased from 15% - 18% three months ago to about 35%. In order to control the overall price of the product, the company had to launch "downgraded" products - the models that were originally standard with 16GB of memory now only offer 8GB versions.
Against the backdrop of the continuous increase in storage chip prices, consumer electronics manufacturers can hardly fully absorb the costs internally and are instead seeking a balance between price increases and configuration downgrades. A research report from Donghai Securities believes that in the context of rising storage prices, the PC and smartphone markets may face the dual pressures of "terminal price increases" and "product configuration downgrades" in 2026.
The impact of the price increase has also begun to spread from mobile phones and computers to a wider range of electronic product markets. According to Sohu Technology, as the memory price rises, the prices of cameras and game consoles have also increased significantly. Even accessories such as mobile hard drives and camera memory cards are more expensive than last year. A boss of a digital product store said bluntly: "Almost all electronic products involving storage chips have seen price increases. Mobile phones and computers will definitely increase in price, and now mobile hard drives have also increased a lot. The larger the capacity, the more expensive they are."
From mobile phones, computers to game consoles and storage devices, a tiny storage chip is redefining the prices of consumer electronics.
02: AI is "Consuming" Future Storage Production Capacity
If we only look at the terminal market, this round of price increase seems to be just a part of the cyclical fluctuations in the consumer electronics industry. However, the real variable that has changed the supply - demand relationship is AI.
In the past two years, with the rapid growth of the demand for large - model training and inference, global technology companies have started to build AI data centers on a large scale. What supports the operation of these computing power infrastructures is not only GPUs but also a large amount of high - bandwidth memory HBM (High Bandwidth Memory). Different from ordinary DRAM, HBM requires more complex stacking and packaging technologies, and its manufacturing process consumes 3 to 4 times more wafers than ordinary DRAM. This means that under the same production capacity conditions, producing HBM will occupy more storage manufacturing resources.
Driven by profits, storage manufacturers have started to re - allocate their production capacity. Companies such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have all shifted their advanced - process production capacity from traditional consumer - grade memory such as DDR4 and DDR5 to HBM production. HBM has become one of the most core supporting components for AI servers, and its demand growth rate far exceeds that of the traditional consumer electronics market. As a result, the supply of ordinary memory originally used for electronic products such as mobile phones and PCs has been further compressed.
The demand scale of AI infrastructure also far exceeds that of traditional applications. Some industry institutions estimate that just one company, OpenAI, consumes more than 50% of the total production capacity of the world's three major storage manufacturers in terms of DRAM wafers per month when building its AI data center. In response, Tang Siliang, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology of Zhejiang University, said: "AI chips have high requirements for video memory. As most of the production capacity is transferred to high - end video memory chips, the production capacity of consumer - grade chips is in short supply, and the market starts to raise prices."
Meanwhile, the previous production capacity adjustments in the storage industry have also magnified this supply - demand contradiction. When the demand for consumer electronics was low in 2023, manufacturers such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron significantly reduced production to prevent prices from continuing to fall. TrendForce data shows that Samsung stopped accepting new DDR4 orders after June 2025, SK Hynix plans to reduce its DDR4 production to about 20% at the beginning of 2026, and Micron gradually withdrew from the DDR4 supply at the end of 2024. In the NAND market, manufacturers such as Western Digital, SanDisk, and SK Hynix also started to gradually cut production capacity from 2024.
These production - cut decisions were made to stabilize prices at that time, but when the AI demand suddenly exploded, they further magnified the supply shortage. SK Hynix said in a recent conference call that the current inventory of DRAM and NAND is only about 4 weeks, the HBM production capacity for 2026 has been sold out in advance, and the supply of standard DRAM is in an extremely tight state. With the combination of falling inventory and growing demand, the storage industry is gradually shifting from a buyer's market to a seller's market.
Under such a supply - demand pattern, terminal manufacturers have to accept higher prices to lock in future production capacity. SK Hynix clearly stated in a recent Goldman Sachs conference call that the global storage industry has entered a seller's market. With low inventory and the early sell - out of HBM production capacity, the upward trend of storage prices in 2026 is likely to continue throughout the year.
Conclusion
Mobiles are getting more expensive, computers are having their configurations downgraded, and game consoles, hard drives, and memory cards are also becoming more expensive simultaneously. Products that seem to belong to different markets actually rely on the same storage supply chain. When AI data centers start to consume a large amount of high - bandwidth memory, the storage production capacity originally serving consumer electronics is being re - allocated. As inventory decreases and HBM production capacity is sold out in advance, the storage industry is gradually entering a seller's market.
This means that the price change of electronic products may not be a short - term fluctuation but a chain reaction brought about by the competition in AI computing power. As the demand for computing power continues to expand, consumer electronics also start to pay the price for this technological competition.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Guanchao Technology Pro", author: Gao Heng, published by 36Kr with permission.