Global smartphone SoC shipments drop 15 percent in H1 2026

Counterpoint says rising memory costs and cautious OEM inventory hurt MediaTek and Qualcomm, while Apple, Samsung, and others posted growth.

File photo: Multiple smartphones

Memory costs squeeze the industry

Photo from Counterpoint Research

Global smartphone SoC shipments fell 15 percent year-on-year in H1 2026, weighed down by rising memory costs, cautious OEM inventory management, and longer device replacement cycles, according to Counterpoint Research's latest Global Smartphone SoC Shipments Preliminary View report.

MediaTek and Qualcomm each saw shipments drop more than 25 percent during the period, while Apple, Samsung, Google, and UNISOC posted solid growth, each for different reasons.

Senior Analyst Shivani Parashar said Apple gained 4 percentage points in market share year-on-year in H1, driven by strong iPhone 17 sales. Qualcomm and MediaTek both lost ground, though for different reasons.

Qualcomm's premium segment slowed after Samsung's Galaxy S26 series adopted both the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Samsung's own Exynos 2600, compounded by weaker Xiaomi 17 sales. MediaTek's low-end and entry-level 5G chips took a hit from the memory shortage, though its premium 9500 series held up well on design wins with vivo, OPPO, Pocophone, and Redmi.

Many entry-level smartphone models are migrating to UNISOC's 4G platforms in efforts to reduce BoM costs, helping UNISOC achieve growth in H1 2026. Additionally, UNISOC is making significant progress in 5G adoption through partnerships with Pocophone and Redmi, Parashar added.

Memory prices surged more than 300 percent in Q2, pushing OEMs to lock in long-term supply deals to weather the shortage or gain share. As a result, rising device prices are now driven mainly by memory costs rather than hardware upgrades.

Still, GenAI-enabled smartphone SoC shipments climbed 24 percent in H1, as premiumization and rising consumer demand for AI features continued to lift volumes in the mid-high, premium, and flagship tiers.

Global smartphone SoC shipments are expected to decline by 14 percent YoY in 2026. The entry-level market is set to be the most severely affected, with shipments likely to fall by more than 30 percent YoY this year, Principal Analyst Soumen Mandal said.

In H1 2026, smartphone memory costs surpassed SoC costs across all price segments and we do not expect the memory supply to normalize before H2 2027, which means the smartphone industry could experience another difficult year in 2027, he added.

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Source: Counterpoint