Before every August, Indians who&#x27;ve been nursing a cracked screen or a lagging phone make the same calculation: wait for the festive season. The discounts will come. After all, they always do. This year, they might not. AI data centres are consuming more than 70% of high-end memory chip production. The same chips that go into your phone. Apple has already raised Mac and iPad prices. Budget Android phones in India are up 30 to 40% since January. And the shortage isn&#x27;t expected to ease until 2027. Tune in. *We want to get to know you a little better. Tell us what you think about Daybreak here. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

AI is eating your phone's memory and hiking up prices. No, festive sales can't save you either

Daybreak

Just last week, on Thursday morning, Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had hiked up the prices on Macs and iPads by up to $200 or more. Now, while iPhone prices were unchanged at the moment, in a separate statement, the company said that it had now reached a point where it needed to begin racing prices, and that it had never seen a component price increase this much this quickly.

Now, if you're wondering what component Apple is referring to, it's talking about storage and memory. You see, as AI companies around the world have kept buying up memory chips, there has been a shortage of those same storage components for consumer product use. And that shortage is now driving up the cost for what memory is available.

And companies are passing on their increased manufacturing costs on to you. And it's not just Apple. Brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, etc., all brands which are very popular in India for their cheap phones, have all seen hikes of at least 1,000 rupees for their budget phones. You know, the ones that sell for 15,000 to 30,000 rupees. Now, it's not like price hikes for phones are new.

They happen almost every cycle. And because they're so routine, there's a very specific way that the famously price-sensitive Indian consumer likes to go about the way they upgrade. Any Indian phone owner with a cracked screen, a lagging interface or diminishing storage knows the drill, that an upgrade should wait till the festive season.

Starting from Independence Day on August 15th to Diwali in October and Christmas and New Year at the end of the year, Indians crowd e-commerce platforms to gift themselves and their loved ones the latest in tech products, appliances, and much more.

AI is eating your phone's memory and hiking up prices. No, festive sales can't save you either

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

AI is eating your phone's memory and hiking up prices. No, festive sales can't save you either

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.