A smartphone storm is coming, however Apple already constructed a shelter

It’s frequent data that the smartphone market isn’t in a very good place proper now. However new analysis has revealed the unprecedented severity of the issue, the possible timeframe earlier than issues get higher, and the one firm that’s greatest positioned to outlive the ordeal. Spoiler: it’s Apple.

In accordance with analysts at IDC (through Bloomberg), the worldwide reminiscence scarcity will trigger the smartphone market to shrink by 12.9% in 2026. That’s a shortfall of roughly 160 million models that have been bought final yr and received’t be bought this yr, a state of affairs the analysis agency characterised as “a disaster like no different.” And many of the impression might be felt by corporations making low-cost Android handsets.

The issue is said to AI, which is sucking up assets that may in any other case be accessible for telephone producers and inflicting costs for reminiscence to spike. Funds telephones have very slim revenue margins, so their makers are unable to soak up the associated fee will increase; as a substitute they should compromise on part selections or put up their costs. And the market is so aggressive, and value such a excessive precedence for purchasers in that house, that this inevitably ends in decrease gross sales.

“The tariffs and pandemic disaster appear a joke in comparison with this,” stated Nabila Popal, senior analysis director at IDC. “The smartphone market will witness a seismic shift by the point this disaster is over, in dimension, common promoting costs and aggressive panorama.”

Popal added that the state of affairs is unlikely to enhance till mid-2027, on the earliest. And even then, issues received’t return to the best way they have been. “The times of low-cost smartphones are gone, as even when the disaster is over, we don’t count on reminiscence costs to return all the way down to 2025 ranges,” she defined.

It’s lucky for Apple, then, that it received out of the price range smartphone market at what more and more seems to be to have been the right time. Till final spring, the corporate bought a single low-cost telephone, the $429 iPhone SE, alongside its premium iPhone 16, 16 Professional, and 16 Professional Max fashions. But it surely changed this with the $599 iPhone 16e and has by no means seemed again. (When it comes to intent, no less than. It’s debatable whether or not the 16e has matched the recognition of the SE handsets.) In a matter of days, we count on the corporate to launch the iPhone 17e at an analogous value level.

Apple and its iPhone vary, which ranges from the mid-market to the premium finish (and with the launch of the iPhone Fold, is predicted to enter the intense premium market) is due to this fact higher positioned than most to climate the storm. But it surely isn’t immune, as the corporate itself has acknowledged. In its most up-to-date earnings report, Tim Prepare dinner stated RAM value will increase didn’t have an effect on Apple in Q1 2026, however admitted the corporate is now “in a provide chase mode,” and experiencing provide constraints like the remainder of the trade.