The days of the sub-$100 smartphone may be numbered as memory costs soar, with China seeing one of the more dramatic shakeups in price points.
Some 173 million smartphones priced below $100 were shipped globally last year. In the second quarter of 2026, shipments in that segment fell almost 60% from a year earlier, IDC data showed. Sub-$100 devices accounted for 27.7% of global shipments for China's Xiaomi in the first half of 2025. A year later, that share had fallen to just 11.2%.
Blame, in part, artificial intelligence's voracious appetite for memory. Chipmakers have prioritized higher-value products used in AI infrastructure, squeezing supplies of those used in smartphones and pushing up costs.
Memory now accounts for almost 60% of the bill of materials for smartphones priced below $200, according to Omdia's Chow Sheng Win.
"Low-end phones are becoming uneconomic to manufacture," IDC Vice President of Client Device Research Bryan Ma said.