India's once-popular sub-₹10,000 smartphone segment has collapsed from 18% volume share in Q3CY25 to just 4% by Q2CY26, representing a dramatic 14 percentage point decline within 12 months. According to Counterpoint Research, memory price inflation is effectively redrawing the entry-level smartphone market as manufacturers face severe cost pressures. Memory prices in entry-level phones have more than doubled, soaring from 15-20% of the bill of materials to over 45% as of June 2026, severely compressing margins and leaving no room to cut costs by downgrading specifications. High memory costs have driven average mobile phone prices up by 15%, with predictions of another 5-7% increase next quarter, placing further upward pressure on retail prices.
The Indian smartphone market is witnessing a paradigm shift as Chinese brands lose significant market share due to the global memory crisis. According to IDC data, Vivo witnessed a 13% year-on-year decline, with market share dropping from 19% to 18.4% in the second quarter of 2026. Realme saw a 14.2% decline, while Xiaomi, which held a 9.7% market share, saw its shipments fall 10% year-on-year. Oppo, which has a 13.8% market share, witnessed an 8.5% decline in shipments. Other Chinese brands also reported declines, with Poco recording a 12.3% year-on-year shipment decline, OnePlus seeing a 2.5% drop, and iQOO experiencing a 61% decline. In contrast, Samsung strengthened its market share to 16.4% in the second quarter, with market share increasing by nearly 200 basis points, while Apple's market share rose 100 basis points to 8%. The ₹10,000-20,000 smartphone segment remains relatively resilient as entry-level models migrate upward, causing its market share to decline only marginally from 47% in Q4CY25 to 46% in Q2CY26.
Smartphone buyers in India are facing another round of price increases as manufacturers contend with higher memory and component costs and a slowdown in the domestic market. OnePlus has implemented significant price hikes across multiple models, with the OnePlus Nord 6 increasing from ₹44,999 to ₹46,999 and the Nord 6 (12GB variant) rising from ₹50,999 to ₹52,999. OnePlus Nord CE6 has seen price increases of up to ₹2,000 across variants, while the Nord CE6 Lite (8GB+256GB) has been revised upward from ₹30,999 to ₹34,999. Oppo has also revised prices significantly, with the Reno 16 5G increasing from ₹66,999 to ₹71,999 and another variant rising from ₹59,999 to ₹63,999. Oppo Reno 16c 5G has seen price increases of ₹3,000-₹4,000 depending on the variant, with some Oppo A series models also receiving smaller price adjustments. Latest data from Money Control shows that Realme has hiked prices of seven models-- C100x 4G, C83 5G, 16T 5G, 16 5G, 16 Pro 5G and 16 Pro+ 5G in the range of ₹1,000 and ₹4,000. Vivo has increased costs of the Y series-- Y51 Pro, Y31, Y21, Y11 and Y19s series-- in the range of ₹500 and ₹4,000, indicating that the price surge is spreading across the entire smartphone ecosystem.
The memory crisis is creating clear winners in India's smartphone market. The chief beneficiaries of the price increase are two segments: smartphones priced between ₹20,000 and ₹30,000, and premium models in the ₹30,000-45,000 band. While the former saw its volume share rise to 25% in Q2CY26, the latter's share grew from 6% in Q4CY25 to 10% in Q2CY26. Samsung phones in the mid-range and budget lineups have seen consistent price hikes in recent months, with the Galaxy A06 5G now priced at ₹13,999 (up from ₹10,499) and the Galaxy A36 5G costing ₹33,999 (up from ₹32,499). OnePlus has hiked prices of Nord 6, CE6, CE6 Lite, and newly launched N6 and N6x series in the range of ₹2,000 and ₹4,000, while OPPO has increased prices of Reno 16 series and A6 series models in the price range of ₹1,000 and ₹5,000.
The price increases come as India's smartphone market is already contracting, with smartphone shipments declining by about 11.1% year-on-year to 33.2 million units in the second quarter of calendar year 2026. According to IDC, this takes shipments in the first-half of 2026 to 64.2 million units, the lowest first-half volume in five years. The crisis is particularly severe in the budget segment, with shipments of smartphones priced below $100 (₹10,000) seeing the biggest drop during the second quarter and plunging 74.3% year-on-year. As per Mint, India's smartphone market is the world's second-largest and also the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer, with over 99% of the devices sold in the country produced domestically. According to IDC, the market shift is driven by what is often described as 'RAMpocalypse', which is driven by a severe global crisis of memory and storage chip shortages due to massive AI data center demands. In just three months, memory prices have seen around a 300% spike, and it continues to go up. As reported by multiple sources, AI data centres are eating all the memory chips, with large companies like Google, Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI buying up chip capacity at any price. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are allocating resources to produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI chips, leaving very little for smartphones.
