Here is the price forecast for the end of the year. A vast zone of rising prices has settled over phones, and it is moving from east to west.
In India, an average rise of 21%. Over Asia-Pacific, 19%. Over the Middle East and Africa, 18%. The United States stays sheltered, at 5%.
These figures, published this week by the outlet Rest of World based on the firm Counterpoint, do not describe a market whim. They describe a shift. The shift of memory, the small chip that lets your phone keep several apps open at once, and which is now going elsewhere.
The sub-100-dollar phone is fading away
According to the firm IDC, sales of smartphones under 100 dollars fell by nearly 60% in the second quarter compared with last year. In 2025, 173 million of them were sold worldwide.
One example says it all. In India, Xiaomi's Redmi 15C, an entry-level model, cost 12,499 rupees at launch in December, about 140 dollars. In June, it cost 16,999. The same phone, 36% more expensive in six months.
Chinese makers, who sell about six in ten smartphones worldwide, have sharply cut their entry-level projects this year. For them, a phone under 100 dollars is simply no longer profitable.
Where did the memory go?
Into artificial intelligence data centers.
Three companies, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, make over 90% of the world's working memory. But AI chips need a very particular memory, ultra-fast and stacked in layers, called HBM. It sells for much more and earns far more.
So the makers made a simple choice: rather than build new factories, they reserved a growing share of existing ones for AI memory. What is left for phones, computers and consoles has become scarce, and therefore expensive. Micron even shut down its consumer brand, Crucial, at the end of 2025 to focus on AI and businesses.
In a cheap phone, memory used to account for about 15% of the component cost. It can now be half. On a 100-dollar device, there is no margin left to absorb the shock.
Prices are rising on models sold in Europe too, but it shows less on high-end phones, where memory weighs little in the total price. It hits small budgets hardest: models under 150 euros are getting scarce, and new releases launch at higher prices than the previous ones. If you planned to replace an entry-level phone, keeping yours a bit longer, or going refurbished, may be worth it.
Those who pay the most
For a European, a few dozen euros more on a phone is bad news. For a large part of the world, it is a door closing.
In Africa, 81% of smartphones sold in 2025 cost under 200 dollars. Sales of models under 100 dollars fell 34% there in a year. According to figures cited by Rest of World, an entry-level device already costs about 44% of the monthly income of the poorest 20% of people worldwide, and 76% in sub-Saharan Africa.
In many of these countries, the smartphone is not a gadget. It is the bank, the school, the market, the only access to the internet. Ivan Lam, of Counterpoint, sums up what is coming: what used to cost under 150 dollars may soon cost under 250, or even 300.
A shared resource
We often talk about the electricity and water used by AI. We talk less about its other appetites. Memory is one of them: a limited resource, made by three companies, that everyone shares.
We saw it with China, which now mass-produces its own memory: every new factory shifts the balance. For now, that balance tilts clearly toward data centers.
The takeaway
When we talk about the cost of AI, we think of the bill paid by the companies building it. But part of that cost is paid elsewhere, by people who may never use an AI assistant, and who simply see the price of their first phone soar.
The forecast does not promise clear skies soon: memory makers are planning new factories, but they will not run for several years. Until then, the 100-dollar phone may remain a memory.