RAM costs doubled twice: Nothing CEO Warns of Price Hikes

If you have been waiting for a sale before upgrading your phone, Nothing CEO Carl Pei has a blunt message: that window may already be closing. 

Memory chips have quietly overtaken the processor as the single most expensive component in building a modern smartphone, and the price spiral shows no sign of slowing.

Pei flagged the shift in a post on X on June 12, revealing that RAM and storage combined now account for more than half of a phone's total bill of materials, a threshold that has historically been held by the chipset.

For Nothing's own phone (4a), memory costs doubled between the point the device was conceived and the point it launched.

The root cause is demand from the AI industry. DRAM prices have surged sharply in 2026 as data centre operators and AI hardware makers compete for the same supply that smartphone manufacturers need.

The rise in prices was estimated at around between 10 and 30% of production costs depending on the model as observed by industry analysts monitoring the industry.

The suppliers are working within limitations in terms of capacities, hence forcing the manufacturers to rely on quota allocations that also come at expensive costs.

There has been nothing that pushed up prices on both the Phone (4a) and Phone (4a) Pro models immediately after their release in March.

Pei pointed out that beginning in February, there have been a number of phone releases, which were around $100 more expensive than their predecessors.