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Xiaomi's 2026 Price Hike: Get Ready to Pay More for Less (Thanks, AI)So, Xiaomi's waving... Xiaomi's 2026 Price Hike: Get Ready to Pay More for Less (Thanks, AI)
So, Xiaomi's waving the white flag on phone prices in 2026? Color me shocked. NOT.
The Memory Squeeze: Who's Really to Blame?
Let's be real, this "memory crunch" they're whining about... it's not just some random act of God. It's AI, plain and simple. All these "smart" devices need more and more memory to run their useless AI features, and who pays the price? You do. We do. Xiaomi's Lu Weibing is out there saying memory chip prices bottomed out in 2023, and now it's all uphill from here. He expects new memory output won't arrive until 2027. Great. So we’re screwed for the next year and a half.
And don't even get me started on this "premium push" with the Xiaomi 17 series. Oh, so now they're going after Apple's iPhone 17? Because that's totally what the world needs – another overpriced slab of glass and metal with a fruit logo on the back. They raised prices on the Redmi K90, too, citing rising memory costs. Funny how that works, isn't it? Raise prices, blame the "market," and pocket the difference.
The South China Morning Post quotes Lu saying rising memory chip prices could squeeze profits and hit domestic players in China hardest. Some companies will fall behind – or even exit the market, he apparently cautioned. Boo-hoo. Maybe if they weren't all trying to cram the latest AI garbage into every device, they wouldn't be in this mess.
And Samsung? They're feeling the heat too, apparently. Rising memory and processor costs are pressuring them to raise prices on the Galaxy S26. They're evaluating pricing ahead of the February launch. Oh, the suspense! As if they're not already charging an arm and a leg for these things. Reuters also noted that Samsung raised prices on certain memory chips by 30–60% this month. What a coincidence.
HyperOS: A Band-Aid on a Broken System?
Xiaomi's pushing out this HyperOS 3 update for older phones like the Poco F5 and Xiaomi 12T Pro... It's like putting lipstick on a pig. Sure, it might make things look a little better, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem: these phones are getting more expensive, and the "improvements" are mostly just bloatware and AI gimmicks that nobody asked for.
They've begun internal testing of stable HyperOS 3 firmware on the Xiaomi 12T Pro, Poco F5, and Poco F5 Pro. The internal test build for the Xiaomi 12T Pro is OS3.0.0.1.VLFMIXM. The Poco F5 Pro and F5 vary from region to region. Who cares? Will it actually make my phone faster? Will it stop the price hikes? I doubt it. More information on the HyperOS 3 update can be found at Xiaomi prepares stable HyperOS 3 update for three global phones from 2022 and 2023.
Trendforce’s latest investigations reveal that while the global macroeconomic outlook for 2026 remains weak, the memory industry has begun a robust upward pricing cycle, increasing overall system costs. In response to these developments, TrendForce has lowered its 2026 global production forecasts for smartphones and notebooks. Smartphone output is now projected to decrease by 2% YoY, compared to an earlier estimate of a +0.1% increase. Meanwhile, notebook production is expected to shrink by 2.4%, down from a previous forecast of +1.7%. So basically, everything is getting more expensive, and we're getting less of it. Great.
Offcourse, all this is great for Xiaomi's electric vehicle unit posting a profit for the first time in a single quarter, according to ijiwei. Gotta fund those ego projects somehow, right?
So, What's the Real Story?
It's simple: AI is driving up costs, and we're all getting screwed. Xiaomi and Samsung are just the first dominoes to fall. Get ready for higher prices, less innovation, and a whole lot of useless AI features you never wanted in the first place. Ain't that always the way?