【#Tech24H】Smartphone manufacturers, already weakened by consecutive price hikes in storage chips, are now facing another blow from SoC (systemonachip) suppliers like Qualcomm. In late July, Qualcomm sent price adjustment notices to global customers, raising prices across its entire chip product line effective September 1. Reports indicate a minimum increase of 10%, with the upcoming new flagship chip Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro seeing an increase as high as 18%. This follows MediaTek’s price hike notice for its Dimensity series chips in late June, marking another major SoC chip giant raising prices. In the global smartphone SoC market, Qualcomm and MediaTek together hold over half of the market share. Now that both are raising prices simultaneously, the baseline cost of chips for the entire Android ecosystem may be reshaped. To alleviate pressure from surging storage costs, major handset makers like OPPO, vivo, and Honor have been gradually raising prices of their mid-to-lowend phones since midMarch. However, judging from subsequent sales changes, Android phone makers have fallen into a dilemma of “losing volume as soon as they raise prices”. It should be noted that Huawei, with its selfdeveloped Kirin chips, and Apple with its Aseries chips, do not rely on external procurement for core SoC supply, so the price hikes by Qualcomm and MediaTek will not directly push up their chip procurement costs. [ By Zhang Liyan | Tang Ruohan ]