Chinese phone makers raise prices as memory costs bite

China’s leading smartphone-makers have hiked prices for their latest flagship devices by up to RMB 3,000 ($446) from previous generations amid rising memory costs, repots Caixin.

Vivo Mobile, Oppo, Xiaomi and Honor Device launched their latest flagship phones in September. Prices for the standard editions of the Oppo Find X10, the Vivo X500, the Xiaomi 18 Pro and the Honor Magic 9 rose by RMB 500 to RMB 1,100 from their predecessors, while the price increases for higher-storage versions were steeper, reaching as much as RMB 3,000.

The price hikes highlight how strong demand for chips used in AI data centers is squeezing consumer electronics supply chains, causing memory chip shortages and forcing handset vendors to pass rising component costs to consumers.