Phones might get pricier next year. Thank the AI boom
Phones might get pricier next year. Thank the AI boom
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Publish Date: 2026-02-23 13:37:00
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Smartphones may soon become more expensive due to rising memory prices. – SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Fancy cameras, giant screens and massive storage usually make smartphones more expensive. But next year, it’s a routine component that might be boosting prices: memory.
And it’s not just phones. Any device that uses memory, from phones to tablets and smartwatches, could get pricier.
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.
A boom in data center demand
Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft and Google have aggressively expanded their data centers and infrastructure this year to keep up with AI demand. And that growth is expected to continue: A report from McKinsey & Company indicates companies will invest nearly $7 trillion in data center infrastructure-related costs globally by 2030.
That’s prompted memory manufacturers like Micron and Samsung to shift their focus to data centers, which use a different type of memory than computers and smartphones. As a result, there are fewer resources for consumer products, said Wang.
Memory and storage company Micron announced on Wednesday that it’s exiting the consumer memory business, citing a “surge in demand” coming from “AI-driven growth” in data centers.
Jaejune Kim, executive vice president for memory at Samsung, said in October that the company saw strong demand for memory for AI and data centers in the…
