SoftBank said higher semiconductor memory prices will hit later handset launches in Japan, while Huawei said cost pressure is already forcing price increases across China’s smartphone market.
SoftBank and Huawei have both warned that surging semiconductor memory costs are pushing smartphone prices higher, underscoring a broader industry squeeze tied to AI-driven demand for memory and related chip capacity. At SoftBank's August 4 first-quarter earnings briefing, President and CEO Junichi Miyakawa said the price impact should become clearer in models launched in the second half of the fiscal year ending March 2027, with premium devices likely to pass more of the burden to consumers while lower-end models are partly protected by inventory secured in advance. A day later, Huawei Executive Director Richard Yu said persistently high memory prices were squeezing margins so severely that handset makers could not keep selling at current levels without risking sustained losses, and market data in the report said Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, OnePlus, vivo and Honor have already raised prices in China. The developments suggest higher handset prices could lengthen replacement cycles, pressure upgrade demand and support growth in the secondary market.