The year 2025 is not over yet but the smartphone production forecast for 2026 has already been released by Counterpoint Research. According to them, production will decrease by 2.1% due to the shortage of memory and storage chips due to high demand from the data center sector, especially artificial intelligence (AI).
High demand for data centers has caused the price of RAM and SSD for computers to increase by up to 40%. On average, smartphone prices in 2026 are expected to increase by 6.9%. Counterpoint also said that all major manufacturers Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Honor will experience a production decline of up to 4% compared to 2025.
Some manufacturers have warned that the price of their devices next year will increase. In addition to production being reduced, there is a prediction that next year support for microSD cards and memory as low as 4GB of RAM will return to smartphones.