Most expensive ever! Qualcomm Snapdragon 8E6 flagship phones start at over 6000 yuan.
The price increase of memory chips has become an industry-wide consensus and has been characterized as a “long-term event.” Currently, DRAM and NAND prices have surged fourfold compared to before the price increase. As channel inventory is gradually depleted, a new round of price increases has been fully launched since the second quarter of this year, and all major brands, including Apple, have not been spared.
The cost pressure from the price increase is rapidly being passed on to end-user prices. Reports indicate that some older flagship models equipped with the Snapdragon 8E5 (i.e., Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5) are now priced around 5000 yuan.
The next-generation Snapdragon 8E6 flagship chip, expected to debut this September and using TSMC’s 2nm process, may have a starting price of over 6,000 yuan for new phones. The higher-end Snapdragon 8E6 Pro version, requiring expensive LPDDR6 memory, may have an even more aggressive pricing strategy.
Faced with this situation, mobile phone manufacturers are adjusting their product strategies. Reports indicate that many new models will choose to continue using the Snapdragon 8E5 chip to maintain a price range below 5000 yuan, serving as a buffer against price increases in the high-end market.
The new pricing structure will gradually become clearer as brands release new products. The current phase is seen as a painful period for the entire industry to adapt to high storage prices. For consumers, a general price increase in mobile phones due to rising storage chip prices is inevitable, and the price threshold for future flagship models will be further pushed up.
Editor’s Review:
The price of memory chips has surged fourfold and has been characterized as a “long-cycle event,” indicating that the price increase of mobile phones is by no means a short-term fluctuation. The siphon effect of the AI industry on HBM memory is still intensifying, and the supply gap of consumer electronics memory chips is unlikely to be filled in the short term.
With the starting price of new Snapdragon 8E6 phones exceeding 6,000 yuan, the “cost-effectiveness” label of Android flagships is being shattered, and consumers are now in a painful period of “forced adaptation.”
For the industry, this may reshape the entire mobile phone market’s pricing structure—as the entry barrier for flagship models continues to rise, the line between mid-range and flagship models will become increasingly blurred. Everyone will have to find their own way and accept their fate.
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