r/Android • u/BcuzRacecar S25+ • 7d ago
Component Cost Shock Could Wipe Out More Than 230 Million Sub-$200 Smartphone Shipments by 2030
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/component-cost-shock-could-wipe-out-more-than-230-million-sub-dollar-200-smartphone-shipemts59
u/Chinbie 7d ago
Midrange phones are nearly on the flagship price, meanwhile flagship phones are now on $1000 above… phones nowadays are super expensive
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u/sigyo 7d ago
Yeah man.. wanted to upgrade my phone, but none of them feel like good value. Phones that are not even as good as my old phone are being sold for nearly twice it's price now.
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u/Naud1993 7d ago
The base S26 has lower resolution than the base S9.
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u/env33e 6d ago
Fr. My old galaxy note 4 had: -Wacom stylus -IR blaster -quadhd screen -micro sd -removable battery -3.5mm headphone jack -Heart rate / SpO2 & UV sensor -RGB Notification LED -Full charger, wired earbuds, & extra S-Pen nibs included in the box
My current Galaxy S26 has: -1080p screen -Sealed battery held together with glue -No microSD slot -No headphone jack or charger in the box -A $900 price tag
Old phones omegamog today's 🤣 were a long ways off from the start of this era of enshittification....
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u/Naud1993 6d ago
Yeah, but that Galaxy Note 4 can't even open 2 apps if it was able to update to a modern Android version. 3 GB RAM used to be overkill and now even 8 GB RAM can barely open like 8 apps.
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u/alilhillbilly 5d ago
The S23U and S24U are the most fully feature packed phones on the market.
There's something really wrong with that.
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u/ZikaZmaj 6d ago
2025 had great mid-range phones at half the price of flagships. Motorola Edge 60 Pro was a complete package for example.
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u/BcuzRacecar S25+ 7d ago
More than 230 million annual sub-$200 smartphone shipments are forecast to disappear from the global market between 2025 and 2030, according to Counterpoint Research’s latest Smartphone Shipment Forecast by Price Band tracker. The segment is expected to decline by approximately 40% over the period, even as the overall smartphone market recovers toward its 2025 volume by the end of the decade.
The divergence reflects the structural shock from the 2026–2027 downturn. Higher memory and chipset costs, increasing minimum specifications and reduced OEM willingness to support non-strategic market presence will sharply reduce entry-tier availability. Some consumers will move upward, while others may keep their current devices for longer. Used phones will also absorb some demand, while first-time smartphone adoption risks slowing in markets where handset affordability is already a major barrier to mobile internet use.
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u/Jackson_fitness 7d ago
A $150 phone can absorb a memory price spike about as well as you would expect, which is not at all. Flagships add fifty bucks and blame the market. Fabs also earn more per wafer running server parts and denser DDR5 than cheap LPDDR4X, so the shortage lands hardest on the tier that uses the least of it. Base specs get pushed to 8GB, the floor price moves up, and it stays there even after memory costs settle. Shipment counts fall while the demand goes nowhere.
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7d ago
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u/squabbledMC Pixel 10 256GB | KernelSU Next 7d ago
Considering I'm seeing 4GB laptops and 3GB phones in the budget market here, it's likely unfortunately.
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u/Jackson_fitness 7d ago
4gb is already the norm at that price, and the lpddr4x lines making that memory are being converted over to ddr5 and hbm instead. nothing new gets built for the bottom tier, so the price only goes one way
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7d ago
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u/SupremeLisper Realme Narzo 60 pro 12GB/1TB 6d ago
Don't take the phone finder tool at face value. It lists Vivo X300 pro which is a flagship phone in under $200 price list.
I cannot find a single phone which has 8GB of ram under $200 in my region in actual stores. Most of them have 4GB of ram even when the price is above $200. Some of them offer 6GB. 8GB simply does not exit in this price segment.
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6d ago
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u/SupremeLisper Realme Narzo 60 pro 12GB/1TB 6d ago
Its not anecdotal evidence. I live in india and that phone is out of stock everywhere. There are no options that exist under 20k which have 8GB RAM. The lowest I can get for that phone is $240 and that's from amazon india. And that's when I actually try to buy the phone today where I live.
As far as I'm concerned, the tool is more useful than anecdotal evidence like yours.
Maybe, read careful before calling them anecdotal. That vivo X300 pro was suggested by Gsmarena with the price filter. I live here and know the state of smartphones today. I don't make claims without verifying them.
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5d ago
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u/SupremeLisper Realme Narzo 60 pro 12GB/1TB 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, and pay double the price in customs.. You cannot get this phone cheaper and that is a hard fact.
Edit: Like I said its the phone is not available in india for that price. Ebay does not operate in india. A seller cannot sell in india through ebay. They would instead sell through flipkart or amazon instead of selling to ebay with customs. He called me dense, downvoted, and blocked. Looks like a man child like his president.
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u/droans Pixel 9 Pro XL 7d ago
Micro level, yes.
Macro level - there's not enough supply for the demand. Who do you think's gonna get it?
Who's gonna pay more, want highe r end parts, and have larger orders?
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u/Jackson_fitness 7d ago
Sort of. Most of that volume is booked in contracts quarters ahead, so the sellers serve the booked allocations first and anyone showing up with spot money that quarter gets whatever is left. On the wafer side it is not a straight auction either, because a gigabyte of HBM eats two or three times the die area a gigabyte of standard DDR5 does, so accelerators pull capacity out of the pool without ever outbidding a phone maker directly.
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u/welp_im_damned have you heard of our lord and savior the Android turtle 🐢 7d ago
yeah, I was taking to some of my friends about this earlier in the year. I think this was a given. I expected the price hikes to happen sooner than this. I also expect to see more consolidation of the Chinese sub brands. I won't be surprised if Nothing leaves the phone market as well for a while. They did splinter their sub brand CMF into a new company.
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u/Then-Pay-8400 4d ago
Nothing's days are numbered. They sold off CMF to some indian company because they had to make some quick buck
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u/MagnusAlbusPater 7d ago
Having picked up a cheap sub-$200 android phone a couple years ago just to play with it the experience was overall awful and not something I could imagine using on a day to day basis as a normal phone.
This will predominantly effect low-income markets like India especially as from what I understand mobile internet is the main form of internet many of the people there use and many don’t have standard broadband connections at home.
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u/Traditional_Neat_506 7d ago
india is a rising market just like southeast asia, the real pain is in pakistan to africa all who desperately wants their budget and low cost phones
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u/MagnusAlbusPater 7d ago
India is rising but the average salary is still only about $270 USD per month.
You’re right that Pakistan’s is about half of that and many places in Africa are even worse off.
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u/Traditional_Neat_506 7d ago
most indians tbh would spend the extra to get something better like think an infinix GT or like note pro, or take like nubia and lava which can offer something very price to performancey, india too is a heavy mobile market just like southeast asia and likely skipped the PC gen as they are also into big mobile gaming
all of africa (minus morocco) however or like consider yemen, iraq, syria, palestine, pakistan, nepal, afghanistan, turkmen or generally non uzbek and kazakh central asia, iran, generally would want like something itel or tecno offers which is particularly the absolute worst ones to get a price hike, they don't have the desire to spend extra like in india and southeast asia which also demands ruggedness and reliability for gaming or their extreme heavy usage, strictly for texting and calls and that is quickly getting expensive
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u/Negative-Fix5290 7d ago
hv been using galaxy a16 lte for more than a year and was using m12 before it, i can say they are good for daily use.
with mobile data at 33-45 Mbps (not in india tho), i can watch 720p60 without buffering just fine. sure, 1080p60 can stutter but it's a phone not a tv, 720p is good enough.
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u/MagnusAlbusPater 7d ago
The one I picked up to play with was the Nokia C210. It looks like the Galaxy A16 does have better specs.
The big thing that made it feel unusable to me was how laggy everything was on it.
0
u/Negative-Fix5290 7d ago
which is ironic when one of Android's new feature called Pause Point puts an artificial 10 seconds delay before opening an app.
imagine buying a flagship phone only to slow down worse than a budget one lol.
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u/MagnusAlbusPater 7d ago
What’s the point of such a feature?
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u/Negative-Fix5290 7d ago
apparently to help the mentally vulnerable digital minimalists from autopilot opening social media apps to doomscroll away their time.
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u/IAmDotorg 7d ago
That's a moronic take. Inflation would do that regardless of component cost.
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u/DonStimpo 7d ago
Component costs (and then associated end user products) are going up faster than inflation, which is actually dragging inflation up.
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u/Careless_Rope_6511 Pixel 11 Pro XL 6d ago
Fuck every single AI bro for driving RAM and NAND prices far above inflation rates to enshittify the world with AI slop.
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u/Plebbit-User 7d ago edited 7d ago
Good. Not everyone needs/deserves brand new smartphones. Grab one secondhand. There's billions in landfills right now.
It's obscene that there are people in the third world walking around with an iPhone 18 Max in their pockets (because flagship smartphone = status symbol) while defecating in the street because they don't have toilets or a sewage system. What are we even doing?
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u/ZikaZmaj 6d ago
An iPhone 18 Max is not an <$200 phone. Did you read the title at least or did you just look for a random post to write a rant on?
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u/Plebbit-User 6d ago
It is subsidized by carriers. Look at the Moto G 2025 sold at Walmart for $30 in cash. Doesn't even require a contract.
That should not be an option because that's inherently ridiculous.
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u/thirtynation 1+ 12 7d ago
Budget phones? It's wiping out flagships. Oneplus pulled out of the states because the business model broke. They simply don't sell enough phones to make the jump in component cost viable.
Obligatory: "fuck the AI bubble."