In 2026, when it comes to consumer electronics that require large amounts of memory chips, there's only one word for it—price hikes.

Phones are getting more expensive, PCs are getting more expensive, game consoles are getting more expensive... all because memory chip prices have skyrocketed over the past year or so. To put it plainly: 32GB DDR4/5 memory jumped by 2,000 yuan over the past year, and 1TB SSDs rose by 1,000 yuan.

In other words, for a PC equipped with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, the cost has climbed by nearly 3,000 yuan over the past year—with no other configuration changes. How could retail prices not go up?

What's more, since both DDR memory and NAND flash are rigid costs, they account for a larger share of cheaper products. That means the cheaper the product, the more dramatic its price increase.

Let's look at the data. Compare the average selling prices of the world's top five phone brands in Q3 2025 with those in Q3 2026, and the picture becomes clear.

This data is compiled from Counterpoint figures, with US dollars converted to RMB at current exchange rates.

As you can see, in terms of the absolute amount of the price increase, Apple of course rose the most—over a thousand yuan at a time—because Apple phones are all high-end models with few variants. Indeed, this year's new iPhone 18 Pro went up by 1,000 yuan right out of the gate, with higher-end configurations rising even more, so naturally the average price rose more. But the percentage increase was only 18.5%.

Samsung rose by about 420 yuan, a price increase of 20.7%, while OPPO and VIVO's increases were also around 20%, at just over 300 yuan—slightly lower than Samsung.

Xiaomi rose by about 430 yuan, from 975 yuan last year to 1,403 yuan. In absolute terms, the increase wasn't as much as Apple's, but the percentage was as high as 43.8%—ranking first in the world.

This is actually because Xiaomi's previous average price was the lowest, so memory chip costs accounted for the highest share—and therefore the percentage increase was also the highest, given the small base. Even after the price hike, Xiaomi still has the lowest average price in the world—lower than Apple, Samsung, OPPO, and VIVO.

That said, raising prices is no easy decision for Lei Jun either, because we found that despite such a large price increase, Xiaomi's gross profit actually fell. Combined with declining sales, both revenue and profit declined. The money from the price increase all went to memory chip companies. It really makes one sigh: phone manufacturers take the blame for price increases, while the real money-makers are the memory companies.