Global smartphone SoC shipments are expected to decline 7% YoY in 2026

Counterpoint Research reported yesterday (January 28) that global smartphone SoC (system-on-chip) shipments are expected to decline 7% year-on-year in 2026, hit by rising memory prices and supply constraints, with low-end models priced below US$150 taking the hardest hit.

Although global mobile phone chip shipments are expected to decline 7% year-over-year in 2026, total market revenue will achieve strong double-digit growth. This contrast stems mainly from extreme divergence in market structure: while overall unit sales are under pressure, the increase in semiconductor content per device and the rise in average selling prices (ASP) are strongly driving revenue upward against the trend.

Breaking this down by manufacturer, citing the blog post, CounterPoint estimates global mobile phone chip shipments for 2026 as follows:

· MediaTek's market share was 34.0%, with shipments down 8% year-on-year.

· Qualcomm's market share was 24.7%, with shipments down 9% year-over-year.

· Apple's market share was 18.3%, with shipments down 6% year-over-year.

· Unisplendour's market share was 11.2%, with shipments down 14% year-on-year.

· Samsung's market share was 6.6%, with shipments growing 7% year-over-year.

The core resistance causing the decline in shipments comes from continuously rising memory prices. As foundries and memory suppliers prioritize allocating capacity to high-margin HBM (high bandwidth memory) to support data center expansion, supply of ordinary memory has become tight.

For the highly price-sensitive low-end smartphone market under $150, this cost pressure hits hardest. By contrast, brands with in-house chip capabilities have demonstrated greater resilience.

Although the low-end market has cooled, the high-end market remains hot. Analysts point out that nearly one-third of smartphones sold in 2026 will be high-end models priced above $500.

Apple and Qualcomm, with their deep positioning in the high-end segment, will be the biggest beneficiaries of this trend. Meanwhile, MediaTek is accelerating its efforts to close the gap, while Samsung is also gaining more share in the high-end market.

2026 will be seen as a key turning point for chip process technology, with flagship SoCs officially transitioning from 3nm to 2nm. Samsung beat everyone to the punch in December 2025 by launching the world's first 2nm smartphone chip — the Exynos 2600. With the upcoming release of the Galaxy S26 series, Samsung is expected to further solidify its position in the high-end market through this technological advantage.

The rapid adoption of generative AI (GenAI) is another major factor driving up device prices. By 2026, flagship smartphones are expected to reach 100 TOPS of on-device AI peak computing power, with nearly 90% of high-end models supporting on-device AI features. However, constrained by memory cost pressures, mid-range models priced between $100 and $500 will rely more heavily on cloud-based AI processing, creating a pronounced "computing power gap" in user experience compared with flagship models.