RAM Went From $2.80 a Gigabyte to $12. Google's Next Phone Costs More and Carries Less of It

Google has confirmed that prices are going up across its Pixel range, and it is blaming the cost of memory.

Shakil Barkat, the company's vice-president of devices and services, said "there's never been an increase in memory prices like the world's going through right now", adding that Google had "shielded our consumers from supply fluctuations for as long as possible" but that "the economics have fundamentally shifted". Specifics are being held until an announcement on 12 August.

What is actually going up

The figure behind all of this is a per-gigabyte price. Morgan Stanley data cited in reporting on the announcement puts the cost of a gigabyte of RAM at $2.80 in 2025 and $12 in 2026.

Applied to the memory tiers phones actually ship with, the increase hits the bill of materials hard before a processor, display or camera is even counted.

The phone is getting less memory, not more

But this isn't a straightforward price rise. Leaked specifications suggest the Pixel 11 Pro will carry 12GB of RAM rather than the 16GB of its predecessor, with base storage doubling to 256GB.

For a generation of phones sold on on-device AI, a flagship shipping with a quarter less memory than last year's model is an odd look. Google has also confirmed a "dedicated effort" to cut memory requirements across Android and the app ecosystem, so that devices "have less RAM while maintaining a great user experience" — which reads rather differently once you know what a gigabyte now costs.

The arithmetic lands within a dollar

The arithmetic is revealing.

Even after cutting a quarter of the memory out, the smaller 2026 part costs 3.2 times what the larger 2025 part did. This is the problem Google is managing: a price rise alone wasn't enough, so a specification cut had to follow.

Phones already on sale are being repriced

The price increases are not confined to unreleased hardware, which is unusual: the Pixel 10a, already in market, is affected, as is the Pixel Watch. Google described the adjustments as rolling out "dynamically to match supply realities".

Repricing a device mid-cycle is rare. Manufacturers normally hold a launch price and absorb component swings until the next generation, because changing the number on a product people are already comparing is a marketing problem as much as a financial one. That Google is doing it anyway shows how far outside the usual range these costs have moved.

Storage is the sweetener

The same leak that points to less RAM points to more storage: base capacity doubling to 256GB on the Pixel 11 Pro.

This isn't a contradiction; it's a substitution. NAND flash, which storage uses, has risen too — TrendForce puts it at 10 to 15 per cent quarter on quarter for the third quarter — but nothing close to the four-fold jump in RAM. Doubling the cheaper component while trimming the dearer one protects the spec sheet at a lower cost than holding both, and storage is the number buyers are more used to reading.

Why memory got expensive

None of this originates with phones. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have been shifting wafer capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, where the margins are better, and the supply left over for everything else has tightened accordingly.

TrendForce forecasts conventional DRAM contract prices rising 13 to 18 per cent quarter on quarter in the third quarter of 2026, with NAND flash up 10 to 15 per cent. It attributes the continued strength to AI server demand, and notes that "ongoing capacity reallocations toward server applications are reducing the supply available for PC DRAM".

The loop this closes

The result is a feedback loop. Phones are being sold on their ability to run local AI models, which requires more memory. But the data centres training those same models have absorbed the memory supply, driving up the price. The phone meant to run AI for you now costs more and ships with less of the component it needs to do so.

We reported this week that Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta nearly doubled their combined capital spending year on year in a single quarter. This is one of the places that spending turns up in an ordinary household — not as a headline, but as a hundred dollars on the price of a phone.

Buyers are reaching a ceiling

There is a limit, and the market is finding it. TrendForce notes that "record-high contract prices mean customers from consumer markets are reaching their affordability limit", with smartphone brands turning "increasingly conservative in production planning and procurement" as demand softens.

Price rises are the visible half of the market's reaction. The other half doesn't make an announcement: fewer units built, and specifications quietly trimmed to protect a price point.

The caveats

• Google has not published numbers. The confirmation is qualitative; specifics are due on 12 August, and the $100 figure is from leaks rather than the company.
• The RAM specification is leaked, not announced. The 16GB-to-12GB change may not survive to launch.
• Per-gigabyte pricing is an estimate. The $2.80 and $12 figures are analyst data; a manufacturer buying at volume on long-term contracts does not pay spot rates.
• Memory is one line in a bill of materials. Our tables isolate it deliberately; they are not a model of what a phone costs to build.
• The near-exact match is a coincidence worth noting, not a finding. Two estimates landing a dollar apart is suggestive and nothing more.

Key takeaways

• Google has confirmed price rises across the Pixel range, with details due 12 August.
• RAM went from about $2.80 a gigabyte to $12, a 4.3× increase on every memory tier.
• Leaked specifications point to less RAM, not more — 12GB on the Pixel 11 Pro against 16GB before.
• Even after that cut, the memory part costs 3.2× what last year's larger one did.
• The cause is capacity shifting to AI accelerators, and forecasters expect tightness into 2027.