Samsung Electronics unveiled its latest series of flagship smartphones on Wednesday, with two of the models costing $100 more than their predecessors as the industry tries to recover from a global shortage of memory chips.
Samsung is touting improved AI and a privacy display in its new models against a backdrop of industry-wide memory chip shortages brought about by the rapid scaling of AI infrastructure.
The average selling price of smartphones in 2026 was expected to rise 6.9% as a result of the memory crunch, Counterpoint Research said in a note in December.
The starting price has stayed flat on the highest end model, the S26 Ultra, compared to last year’s S25 series. The S26 and S26+ saw a $100 rise compared with their S25 predecessors:
Ben Wood, chief analyst at CSS Insight, told CNBC the chip shortage was “not a short-term issue.”
