"Storage surge" is fundamentally reshaping the bill of materials structure for hardware manufacturers
The storage market has entered a "super bull market," with price increases exceeding the historical peak of 2018. Driven by demand from artificial intelligence and servers, suppliers' pricing power has reached an all-time high. It is expected that memory prices will rise by 40%-50% in the fourth quarter of 2025, followed by another increase of 40%-50% in the first quarter of 2026, and approximately 20% in the second quarter. The impact of memory on the bill of materials for the iPhone 17 Pro Max is significant, with an expected share exceeding 20%
The storage market has entered a "super bull market" phase, with price increases surpassing the historical peak of 2018. Driven by sustained strong demand for artificial intelligence and server capacity, suppliers' pricing power has reached an all-time high. According to the recent "Monthly Memory Price Tracking Report (January 2026)" released by South Korea's Counterpoint Research, memory prices are expected to rise by 40% to 50% in the fourth quarter of 2025, followed by another increase of 40% to 50% in the first quarter of 2026, and a further rise of about 20% in the second quarter of 2026.
Impact on smartphones: By 2025, memory will account for over 10% of the bill of materials (BoM) for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, a significant increase from 8% for the iPhone 12 Pro Max in 2020. For flagship models equipped with 16-24GB LPDDR5X memory and 512GB-1TB UFS 4.0 storage, the recent price increases may cause memory costs to exceed 20% of the total bill of materials (BoM).
