According to the latest memory market research from TrendForce, Mobile DRAM contract prices continued their significant upward trend in the second quarter of 2026, placing increasingly heavy cost pressure on smartphone brands. Pricing strategies have diverged between the two major South Korean manufacturers: Samsung is inclined towards a more substantial, one-time price increase, while the provisional quotes currently provided by SK hynix suggest a relatively more moderate, step-by-step approach to raising prices, with final pricing expected to be completed in late May.

Overall, TrendForce forecasts that the average selling price (ASP) for LPDDR4X will see a sequential increase of at least 70–75% in Q2, with LPDDR5X prices rising by 78–83% quarter-over-quarter. Notably, consecutive quarters of sharp price hikes have made cost pressures increasingly severe for smartphone brands. In this environment, brands may not only compress their total smartphone production volume for 2026 but are also likely to struggle to meet the long-term agreement (LTA) bit purchase volumes signed with memory suppliers at the end of 2025.

The era of high prices is reshaping smartphone DRAM specifications. With expensive DRAM becoming the norm, handset configurations are being forcibly readjusted: high-end models are primarily adopting 12GB, scaling back from 16GB; mid-range models are reverting to an 8GB core configuration; and low-end models are converging around 4GB. Despite the gradual phasing out of 2GB and 3GB configurations and reduced production of lower-spec devices, the global average smartphone memory capacity is still projected to increase to 8.5GB in 2026, representing 10% annual growth.

This wave of memory price increases is expected to exert profound and substantial pressure on the global mobile phone industry over the coming quarters. TrendForce notes that smartphone brands are being compelled to adopt more proactive countermeasures. These include coordinating with app developers to reduce memory consumption and developing more service models that rely on cloud resources. The aim is to optimize from both software and system architecture perspectives, maintaining operational resilience and brand competitiveness amidst the dual challenges of rising costs and slowing demand.