Chinese company Xiaomi has warned that smartphone prices are likely to increase further in 2026.
The company highlighted the rising cost of memory chips as the primary factor behind the expected price hike, calling it a growing global challenge driven by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence.
Major memory chip manufacturers including Samsung are shifting production away from mobile chips and offering a bigger share to data centers, where demand for AI hardware is rolling. This shift is pushing memory prices higher across the entire tech industry, affecting smartphone producers expressively, according to Xiaomi.
According to Lu Weibing, president of Xiaomi, this tendency will directly affect the cost of smartphones that are introduced in 2026. He stated that consumers should anticipate discernible rises in retail pricing because production expenses will be significantly greater next year than they are this year.
Even while price increases could be required, Lu continued, they might not be sufficient to offset the growing expenses of manufacturing.
According to the warning, the recent growing trend in smartphone costs is probably going to last for a very long time.
