AI is killing the cheap smartphone - David Oks

Rising demand for AI-specific memory is causing a supply shock that the article says is ending the era of falling consumer electronics prices and threatening cheap smartphones. Global smartphone shipments had their largest decline in 2026, hitting the cheapest segments in Africa and the Middle East hardest. Memory makers are shifting capacity to high-bandwidth memory for AI, which uses far more wafer capacity, leaving standard DRAM scarce. Prices for standard LPDDR and DDR chips have risen over 200 to 400 percent, forcing budget phone makers to raise prices and pricing out millions of low-income consumers.