- OnePlus's upcoming price hike is a stress test of the market by Oppo, aimed at paving the way for further price adjustments in April.
- Other major industry players, including Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor, have also drafted similar product price hike plans starting in March.
Oppo's sub-brand OnePlus will announce a price increase of 300 yuan ($43) to 500 yuan on March 10, local media Jiemian reported on Monday.
The OnePlus Ace 6 series will see a jump of 500 yuan, but the company will leave a purchasing buffer period for consumers before the new prices officially take effect.
This move is a stress test of the market by Oppo, aimed at paving the way for subsequent price adjustments for the Reno 15 and Find X9 series in April, according to Jiemian.
Other major industry players, including Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor, have also drafted similar product price hike plans starting in March, the report noted.
Several upcoming next-generation mid-to-high-end flagship smartphones could see significant starting retail price jumps of 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, the report said.
Samsung, which has a relative cost advantage, raised the starting pre-order price of its new generation flagship model, the Samsung Galaxy S26, by 1,000 yuan per unit compared to the previous generation.
Chinese domestic smartphone manufacturers, with the exception of Huawei, are unlikely to implement price increases lower than Samsung's standard, Jiemian said.
The core driving force behind this tech inflation is the continuous and unstoppable surge in the prices of DRAM and NAND components in the global memory chip market.
The explosive growth in demand for AI computing has severely squeezed the supply chain, and the prices of these components have now reached their highest levels since 2016.
This immense cost pressure is not limited to the smartphone sector; it has also spread to the broader personal computer and end-consumer retail markets.
Lenovo has already issued price adjustment notices to physical channel distributors, raising the retail prices of certain computer models by more than 1,000 yuan, while online store discounts have been quietly canceled.
Xiaomi chairman Lei Jun warned last week that surging AI demand has brought unprecedented operational pressure to the company's smartphone and related businesses.
Data from market research firm IDC shows that frequent cost fluctuations could lead the Chinese smartphone market to face multiple price increases within a single year for the first time in history.
($1 = 6.9073 yuan)
