Survey: Chip price increases fueling the trend of "disassembling to extract chips
Huawei, Xiaomi, and Honor have collectively increased the prices of several smartphones, with some models seeing price increases of up to thousands of yuan per unit. Analysts point out that the surge in AI technology has crowded out global memory chip production capacity, leading to significant increases in the prices of general-purpose memory and advanced manufacturing chips for smartphones, forcing manufacturers to raise prices passively. Due to cost pressures, affordable smartphones are gradually declining in popularity, and the industry is entering a new phase characterized by declining shipments and rising average prices. According to data from Counterpoint Research, in the second quarter of 2026, the price increase of smartphone memory exceeded 80% on a quarter-by-quarter basis, and the share of memory chips in the total manufacturing cost of smartphones rose to over 20%. IDC predicts that global smartphone shipments will decrease by 16.7% in 2026, with the average selling price reaching 581 dollars, a rise of 27.6% compared to previous years.