Following OPPO, vivo announced a price increase for some models starting March 18.

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(Source: Jiemian News)

On March 16, vivo announced in the “Notice on the Adjustment of Suggested Retail Prices for Some vivo and iQOO Products” that due to the continuous significant increase in global semiconductor and storage costs, after careful evaluation, vivo will adjust the suggested retail prices of some products starting from 10:00 on March 18, 2026. The specific models and prices will be based on the product detail pages on official channels.

According to Shangguan News, a media reporter learned on March 11 at a large shopping mall in Beijing that a high-end vivo model had increased in price by 500 yuan. The store clerk said that other models will also gradually see price increases in the future.

Prior to this, OPPO announced a product price adjustment on March 10, stating that due to rising costs of key mobile phone components including high-speed storage hardware, after careful assessment, the following decision was made: starting from 00:00 on March 16, 2026, OPPO will adjust the prices of some already released products. Currently affected models include the OPPO A series, K series, and OnePlus, excluding the OPPO Find series, Reno series, and OPPO Pad series.

This is also the second price adjustment after the brand ended memory subsidies on March 4, with increases ranging from 200 to 500 yuan. A and K series products are roughly in the 1,000 to 2,000 yuan price range. Industry analysts believe that based on last year’s market conditions, the overall cost of smartphones—including NAND and DRAM storage chips, assembly costs, and main configurations—has approached $90 to $100 per device. When factoring in R&D and channel investments, it has become very difficult for budget phones to fully cover costs.

On March 16, a reporter from Jiemian News checked OPPO’s official flagship store. Customer service responded that due to rising costs of key components including high-speed storage hardware, some products are being price-adjusted. The specific prices are subject to the sales pages. Currently, among the top-selling products in the store, OPPO A3i 5G starts at 999 yuan, OPPO K12s 5G at 1,399 yuan, and OPPO K13s 5G at 1,799 yuan.

Additionally, leading brands like Xiaomi and Honor have also signaled price increases. On March 5, Xiaomi Group founder Lei Jun stated that the surge in AI demand has caused storage chip prices to skyrocket. He said, “Our mobile business is under great pressure, and we are exploring various ways to minimize the difficulty for consumers to accept higher prices.”

Industry analysts believe that driven by explosive demand for generative AI, global storage capacity is being heavily occupied by AI servers. The prices of DRAM and NAND flash used in smartphones have increased by over 300% in the past three months. The proportion of storage components in the total cost of phones has surged from 10%-15% to 30%-40%, directly squeezing profit margins for mid- and low-end models.

Currently, smartphone manufacturers’ storage chip inventories are nearly depleted, and price hikes are an inevitable way to ease cost pressures. Additionally, costs for core chip foundry services, OLED screens, batteries, and other components are rising simultaneously. Coupled with increased R&D investment in AI at the device side, these multiple cost pressures are driving this industry-wide price adjustment.

Industry insiders predict that this will be the largest and most significant round of collective price increases in the smartphone industry in the past five years, with short-term difficulty in easing the upward trend. Under cost pressures, the smartphone market may see multiple rounds of price adjustments in 2026, with a possible second or even third round in the second half of the year.