Memory Chip Shortage Weighs on China Smartphone Demand
nashnova research
China's June smartphone shipments fell 17% year-on-year to 17 million units, with Goldman Sachs pointing to AI data-center buildouts draining memory-chip supply and pushing up end-device costs — the shortage is now travelling from server rooms to consumers' pockets.
How bad is the shipment drop?
June shipments hit 17 million units, down 17% year-on-year and 36% from May. This means → June was the coldest single month this year, far beyond seasonal swings.
Q2 totalled 69 million units, roughly flat versus last year and the prior quarter — but above Goldman's earlier forecast of 59 million. In plain terms = the quarterly total still holds, but the monthly trend is deteriorating.
Goldman analyst Allen Chang forecasts full-year 2026 shipments will fall 10% year-on-year, dragged down by rising memory costs suppressing demand.
Are 5G phones immune?
June 5G shipments fell 12% year-on-year to 16 million units, accounting for 85% of the total market.
Chang wrote in his report: "We expect 2026 shipments to decline 10% YoY as rising memory costs weigh on demand."
This reflects that memory-price pressure cuts across technology generations — 5G models get no exemption for being "higher-end."
Fewer cameras per phone — but better ones?
Average camera count per handset dropped from a 2022 peak of 3.8 to 2.9 this year.
Yet cameras with at least 20-megapixel resolution rose from 57% of the mix in 2025 to 66%.
This means → under cost pressure, makers are cutting "filler lenses" and concentrating budgets on fewer but higher-spec units. In plain terms = quantity is out, per-unit quality is in.
Why did memory chips suddenly run short?
The root cause: AI data-center buildouts keep draining memory-chip supply — phones and servers draw on the same pool of base components — driving up component costs.
Samsung has already raised prices on its Galaxy lineup; Apple has warned that supply constraints will widen significantly next quarter.
This means → AI's hunger for compute is pushing cost pressure through the memory-chip chain, all the way from data centers to the phone in your hand. China's shipment decline is the latest signal that this chain has reached the consumer end.
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