Months after analysts warned that AI-driven demand for memory chips would ripple through consumer electronics, India is providing the strongest evidence yet that the disruption has arrived, with rising handset prices reshaping the smartphone market.
The memory chips in question — RAM and storage components — are the same ones tech giants need by the truckload to build AI data centers. Manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have been shifting production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips used in AI accelerators, because they’re much more profitable per wafer than the standard memory used in phones and laptops — leaving less capacity, and driving up costs, for everyday consumer electronics.
