Smartphone Price Hikes: Industry Trends and Consumer Impact

The arrival of Samsung's latest crop of foldable flagship and ultra-flagship devices came with a $100 price increase across the board. My reaction, perversely, was relief that the figure wasn't higher, given how badly the AI bubble has severed the link between component pricing and value. My relief isn't just for the wallets of my fellow consumers, but the health of the industry overall.

If you've been keeping an eye on the rumor mill, you're expecting to see every major handset maker follow Samsung's lead. Google is thought to be adding at least $100 onto the price of the new Pixel handsets. That wouldn't be ideal, but if you care enough about getting a brand new phone and can afford it, it won't be the end of the world. Especially if it's split across the length of your contract, burying the bad news across the next 12 or 24 months.

Meanwhile, Apple's outgoing CEO Tim Cook has already laid the groundwork for iPhones to get more expensive, too. Not long after uncharacteristically saying the company couldn't hold prices at their current level, it bumped up the prices on almost all of its product lines. It doesn't take a genius to know that similar rises will be applied to the new iPhones when they launch this fall.

There's a wild theory that Apple is going to split the launch of the iPhones 18 in two as part of this price strategy. It proposes that the (rumored) ultra-flagship iPhone Fold will debut alongside the more lucrative Pro models, with their higher price and higher markup, in the fall. Only after the holiday buying season would the regular iPhone 18 make its debut, perhaps alongside an even more "affordable" iPhone 18e.

The industry-wide price rises have certainly been tough to swallow, and it's clear it's made a lot of people reconsider purchases. It's not as if this is limited to the technology industry, either, as the US Department of Labor says the price of energy has risen by 15.7 percent in the last 12 months.

As budgets get stretched, it's clear people are hoping to make do with what they've got.

There's already hints that the rises are having a chilling effect. In May 2026, Valve withdrew the entry-level Steam Deck, which was priced at $399. The mid-range and premium tier models, meanwhile, saw their prices rise from $549 and $649 to $789 and $949, respectively. A BoilingSteam report believes the price increases caused sales of the popular gaming handheld to drop by a whopping 82 percent.

Similarly, 9to5Mac polled its readers on how the price rises would affect their behavior, with 38 percent saying they would hold onto their hardware for longer. Industry analysts IDC believe the rises will cause a hefty drop in sales across the rest of the year and across 2027. Similarly, it says the smartphone industry should expect to see a "record low" as the memory crunch bites.

So while a $100 price increase certainly isn't the gift we'd all like to see, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. It may just shake out that the monthly cost of all these phones, which was already more than some people would be willing to pay, is even more out of reach.