In the first half of 2026, global smartphone SoC shipments declined by 15%, with the big two (MediaTek and Qualcomm) both declining by more than 25% year-over-year. This has led to Apple, Samsung, Google, and UNISOC actually posting shipment growth during the period.
UNISOC saw an increase because many “entry-level smartphone models are migrating to UNISOC’s 4G platforms in efforts to reduce BoM costs, helping UNISOC achieve growth in H1 2026. Additionally, UNISOC is making significant progress in 5G adoption through partnerships with Poco and Redmi,” said Senior Analyst Shivani Parashar.
Parashar said that Apple’s market share increased by 4% due to its impressive performance of the iPhone 17 series. While Qualcomm’s premium segment saw limited growth as the Galaxy S26 series adopted the Exynos 2600 in some regions, in addition to using the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. MediaTek took a hit in its low-end 5G chipsets due to the ongoing memory shortage.
Memory prices have skyrocketed over 300% in a single quarter
If you’re wondering just how bad it’s getting for memory prices, they skyrocketed by over 300% year-over-year in Q2 2026. This is prompting OEMs to aggressively secure long-term supply contracts. And this is raising device costs, as Counterpoint showed in a separate report. In Q1 2025, DRAM and NAND accounted for 8% and 5% of a phone’s total bill of materials (also known as BoM). Now those numbers are 18% and 25%, respectively.
Memory and storage now account for nearly half of the cost of materials for phones, just six quarters later.
It’s not just memory and storage that are going up; recently, there was a report that Qualcomm is raising prices on its chips quite substantially. Now, Qualcomm and other chip makers never detail how much their chips cost, mostly because every OEM has a different price. But they are going up by double-digits for everyone. Which is going to push phone prices even higher.
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