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If you happen to’ve thought-about constructing or upgrading a PC currently, you’ve seemingly seen the shockingly excessive worth of reminiscence. RAM kits that bought for affordable sums only a 12 months in the past now routinely value two to a few instances as a lot, and costs proceed to rise whereas some units are more and more difficult to acquire completely.

Smartphone house owners could really feel insulated from these swings, since we don’t purchase or set up cell RAM ourselves. Nevertheless, the identical forces driving up PC reminiscence costs are quietly reshaping the smartphones we could plan to buy subsequent 12 months. Right here’s what you should know.

The worth of RAM elements has elevated over the previous few months, primarily because of the surge in demand for AI-related merchandise. Information heart suppliers, comparable to Amazon and Oracle, have been buying DDR5 — at the moment the quickest motherboard reminiscence accessible — to fulfill the rising demand for high-performance computing within the cloud. Worse, fashionable AI servers can characteristic a number of terabytes of DDR5, in comparison with older servers that will have used simply 128GB or 256GB of DDR4. AI infrastructure is absorbing an outsized share of worldwide DDR5 output, that means that PC shoppers are immediately competing with among the greatest tech gamers for RAM modules.

Nevertheless, the bigger wrongdoer is that the AI increase is pushing RAM producers to divert capability to different reminiscence codecs. Excessive Bandwidth Reminiscence (HBM), for instance, is used for the big digital reminiscence swimming pools packed into NVIDIA’s devoted AI playing cards, such because the H100 and GH200. HBM is constructed utilizing the identical wafers as DDR4 or DDR5, whereas the revenue margins will be 2x to 5x larger.

As such, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Know-how — the massive three that account for at the least 75% of worldwide RAM manufacturing — have shifted a big quantity of DRAM to the much more worthwhile HBM since 2023. This has led to a discount in capability devoted to the huge vary of different shopper and enterprise RAM sorts, together with DDR, LPDDR, and GDDR, amongst others.

To focus on simply how ravenous the AI behemoth has develop into, in October 2025, OpenAI signed letters of intent with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to provide reminiscence elements for its large-scale “Stargate” AI infrastructure undertaking. Business reviews recommend that anticipated reminiscence demand for this initiative might attain as excessive as 900,000 DRAM wafers per thirty days — a quantity that, if absolutely realized, would command a considerable share of worldwide DRAM wafer capability. Nevertheless, the precise product combine and supply commitments stay projections fairly than finalized buy orders.

In short, demand for reminiscence is exceptionally excessive, whereas provide stays tight. It’s a vendor’s market proper now, and shopper electronics aren’t even on the high of the bidding checklist. The actual squeeze comes from DRAM makers prioritizing HBM manufacturing — successfully shrinking the pool of reminiscence accessible to smartphones and PCs.

Crucially, this scarcity isn’t unintended. DRAM producers are intentionally avoiding aggressive capability expansions after being burned by oversupply cycles in 2018 and 2022. Whilst costs rise, suppliers have proven a powerful choice for margin self-discipline over chasing quantity — that means aid could come slower than we wish.

OK, however why aren’t smartphones secure? Nicely, they use LPDDR5 or LPDDR5X as a substitute of DDR5 or HBM. Though LPDDR and DDR5 differ electrically and in packaging, they’re typically produced on the identical superior DRAM nodes, that means capability selections upstream have an effect on each markets. Worse, within the reminiscence pecking order, cell DRAM is probably going in third place, behind the extra worthwhile server reminiscence and HBM for AI functions.

Sadly, there doesn’t look like an apparent launch valve on the horizon with which to alleviate the stress. Whereas sky-high costs could make DDR5, LPDDR5, and different sorts a bit extra worthwhile in comparison with HBM, there’s actually no assure that fabs will endure the costly and time-consuming retooling wanted to divert capability in a significant method. No less than not in a rush.

Extra capability is predicted to come back on-line, however this won’t alleviate the bottleneck till 2027. For instance, SK Hynix’s M15X facility (centered on HBM and DRAM) is about to start manufacturing in 2026, whereas Micron’s Idaho fabs are anticipated to start operations within the second half of 2027. By the point a ample provide reaches the market, we could also be going through a fairly pessimistic state of affairs, with significant worth aid not arriving till nearer to 2028.

As such, Counterpoint Analysis has revised its 2026 smartphone cargo estimates down by 2.6%. It notes that smartphone construct prices are anticipated to rise by 10-25% (between flagship and finances fashions) by the tip of the 12 months and will surge by one other 10-15% by mid-2026. The RAM crunch is undoubtedly including some excessive prices to next-gen smartphones.

Certainly, we could possibly be taking a look at costlier smartphones subsequent 12 months, not simply within the premium tier of the market. We’ve already seen reviews that the Galaxy S26 is likely to be costlier than its predecessor, owing to a 16% improve in LPDDR5 prices. Xiaomi has additionally warned that costs are more likely to be larger in 2026, owing to reminiscence chip costs. Decrease-end fashions are particualrly prone to RAM costs, as reminiscence consumes a bigger portion of the BOM and these fashions have trimmer margins to start with.

Nevertheless, provide could possibly be the larger subject. Even Samsung Semiconductor gained’t decide to an inexpensive bulk RAM take care of Samsung Electronics, suggesting that even probably the most distinguished gamers may battle to climate the storm with sufficient capability to fulfill earlier expectations. Capability constraints more and more look unavoidable.

Confronted with sustained reminiscence worth inflation, smartphone producers have a number of levers they’ll pull to guard margins — none of them significantly consumer-friendly.

The obvious response is to ship much less RAM per machine. Reminiscence upgrades are nearly actually off the desk, and telephones with 16GB of RAM could promote in restricted portions or will not be accessible in any respect. For instance, the Odin 3 Extremely handheld gaming console is delayed because of a scarcity of inexpensive reminiscence. We could even see the return of 6GB or maybe even 4GB fashions in finances segments, which might be considerably alarming from a efficiency perspective.

Alternatively, OEMs could shift the notion of worth away from RAM and towards storage, pairing decrease RAM values with larger NAND capability to attain a advertising enhance. For instance, we might even see less complicated SKUs with, say, only a single RAM configuration throughout all storage tiers. If this occurs, we could rely extra closely on reminiscence compression (ZRAM) and applied sciences like “Reminiscence Extension,” which use storage as RAM swap house, could make a reappearance in advertising supplies.

Lastly, manufacturers which are extra delicate to cost stress might need to resort to weakening different specs to offset the upper value of RAM. Particualrly in finances fashions, we might see extra digital camera lenses sacrificed, downgrades to show specs, and even backing out on options like wi-fi charging or costly IP certifications.

Even when RAM costs ultimately stabilize, the smartphones we purchase in 2026 could already be formed by as we speak’s reminiscence crunch — with fewer high-RAM choices, slower {hardware} progress, and better costs throughout a lot of the market.