Carl Pei has a blunt message for anyone holding off on a new phone: buy now. The Nothing chief executive used a post on X to warn that smartphone prices will keep climbing through 2026, and that this year's sale season will spare buyers the discounts they have come to expect. His reasoning rests on a single component memory. A shortage of the DRAM and NAND chips that phones use for RAM and storage has driven their prices up, as AI data centres soak up the supply. The best time to upgrade, Pei said, "was yesterday".

With RAM getting more expensive, Carl Pei says holiday discounts probably won’t be the same this year.

Carl Pei has a blunt message for anyone holding off on a new phone: buy now. The Nothing chief executive used a post on X to warn that smartphone prices will keep climbing through…