The memory crunch created by the AI build-out is now reaching store shelves. DDR5 prices in Germany have risen 414 percent in a year, and memory now accounts for as much as half the parts cost of a budget Android phone, up from about 15 percent before the shortage.
Google raised the Pixel 10a's price by $100 to $599, seven months after launch and with no change to the phone. The 128GB model moved from $499 to $599; the 256GB version now costs $699. The company named the cause itself: a vice president said in July that RAM had gone from $2.80 per gigabyte to $12.
It is not just Google. Apple raised prices across older iPhones already sitting in shops, and Samsung lifted prices by $100 across most of its Galaxy S26 range. The practice has spread from new launches to stock on the shelf.
Nokia chief executive Justin Hotard has named memory and energy as the two shortages holding back data-centre construction, saying the industry would build twice as fast without them. Analysts expect the cost pressure to keep feeding into retail prices, because high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators consumes capacity that would otherwise produce ordinary DRAM.
Google is also responding on the design side: the Pixel 11 Pro dropped from 16GB to 12GB of RAM at the 256GB tier, and the company is reworking Android to need less memory. Micron, one of the largest manufacturers, warned after a record quarter that the shortage will worsen through 2027 and 2028, with new fabs not coming online until 2028. For buyers, the message is blunt: the next generation of phones is likely to cost more — sometimes while shipping less memory than the model it replaces.
