… well, we could end up paying more than expected for those. That’s a dark prediction, I know, but it’s not out of the question for this scenario to play out in 2026.
20-30% more expensive?
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra for reference. | Image by PhoneArena
The pretty much reliable Far East tipster Digital Chat Station recently shared this (it’s machine translated):
The price increase of memory is more serious than everyone thinks. It will be gradually passed on to the consumer end from the supply chain. In the future, we will see that products with large storage capacity will become more and more expensive. […] A few months ago, I said that memory prices were rising, and the recent wave of new phones has confirmed this. LPDDR5X (RAM) is currently showing a significant upward trend. The industry predicts that the memory price of new flagships next year will increase by 20-30% year-on-year.
– Digital Chat Station account on Weibo, October 2025
For reference, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra launched in Europe for ~$1,740, and a 25% price hike on top of that sends us somewhere north of $2,170 for the next Ultra (potentially). Which is not fun at all.
But why?
Xiaomi said that rising memory chip prices have pushed up the cost of making smartphones, Reuters reports.
The Redmi K90 launched Thursday with a base configuration of 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage, priced at 2,599 yuan (~$364), slightly higher than the 2,499 yuan starting price of last year’s K80. Lu acknowledged consumer concerns over pricing differences between configurations and said Xiaomi would reduce the price of the most popular 12 GB/512 GB model by 300 yuan to 2,899 yuan during the first month of sales.
The spike in memory prices comes amid a global scramble for chips for AI applications, which has tightened supply of standard smartphone, PC, and server chips, driving costs up.
So, maybe get a new flagship now?
I can’t tell with certainty whether 2026 flagships will all be 20-30% more expensive, so don’t rush to get a 2025 phone only to find out this tipster’s predictions don’t turn out to be true. If you need a phone right now, there are plenty of models to choose from.
I can give you a great piece of advice, though: flagship or no, ask for a pay rise in 2025 – because 2026 is going to be wild.
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