According to IDC's preliminary data, global smartphone shipments in the July–September 2026 quarter fell 22.0% year over year to 255.3 million units, the steepest decline for any quarter on record. But the sharp drop looks less like a uniform contraction of the whole market and more like a heavy blow to low-end smartphones, whose profitability has been eroded by soaring memory prices. In fact, of the roughly 72 million units lost, more than 90%, or about 66.2 million, came from vendors other than Samsung and Apple. Looking at vendor-level shipments alongside memory prices, component costs, and consumer replacement behavior reveals a structural shift in the smartphone market.
Global smartphone shipments post their biggest-ever decline, with Samsung and Apple at about 45% combined share
IDC estimated global smartphone shipments in the July–September 2026 quarter at 255.3 million units, down 22.0% from 327.3 million a year earlier, a decline of about 72 million units. Omdia and Counterpoint Research, meanwhile, both estimated a 20% year-over-year decline. According to Reuters, Counterpoint noted that third-quarter shipments hit their lowest level since 2012. All of these figures are preliminary and may be revised.
Although the research firms differ by about 2 percentage points on the size of the decline, all three show nearly the same picture for Samsung and Apple's market share. IDC put Samsung at 22.6% and Apple at 22.4%, while Omdia and Counterpoint estimated 23% and 22% respectively. In every case, the top two vendors' combined share came to about 45%. Omdia said this was up roughly 8 percentage points from a year earlier.
Calculated from IDC's shipment figures, Samsung and Apple's combined share rose from 37.0% a year earlier to 45.1%. Omdia's and Counterpoint's shares are rounded to whole numbers, and their year-earlier baselines differ by firm, so the figures cannot be compared precisely. Even so, all point to the same trend: the top two vendors gained concentration even as the overall market shrank sharply. Below, we use IDC's preliminary data, which includes vendor-level shipments, to look at this shift in more detail.
More than 90% of the roughly 72 million-unit decline came from vendors other than Samsung and Apple
IDC's preliminary data by vendor show that the decline in shipments was concentrated in a particular group of vendors. Shipments for July–September 2026 and the same period a year earlier were as follows.
| Vendor | Jul–Sep 2026 | Jul–Sep 2025 | Year over year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung | 57.8 million | 61.4 million | down 5.8% |
| Apple | 57.3 million | 59.7 million | down 4.0% |
| Xiaomi | 30.7 million | 43.4 million | down 29.2% |
| OPPO | 25.6 million | 39.1 million | down 34.5% |
| vivo | 19.1 million | 27.9 million | down 31.5% |
| Others | 64.8 million | 96.0 million | down 32.5% |
Samsung and Apple's combined shipments fell by 6 million units, from 121.1 million to 115.1 million, a decline of just 5.0%. By contrast, combined shipments from Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and the other vendors fell by 66.2 million units, from 206.4 million to 140.2 million, a drop of 32.1% year over year. Adding up the vendor-level declines gives 72.2 million units, of which vendors other than Samsung and Apple account for 91.7%. The small gap from the market-wide decline of about 72 million units comes from rounding in the figures IDC published for each vendor.
A year earlier, vendors other than Samsung and Apple accounted for about 63% of global shipments. If every vendor's shipments had fallen by a uniform 22%, this group would also have accounted for about 63% of the total decline. In reality, more than 90% of the decline was concentrated in this group. The market contraction clearly affected vendors very unevenly.
However, vendor-level totals cannot simply be treated as price-tier totals. Samsung also sells low-end smartphones, and Xiaomi, OPPO, and others also offer high-end products. Still, the research firms' analyses support the view that the shipment decline is concentrated in the low end. In its April–June analysis, Counterpoint explained that Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo depend heavily on price-sensitive entry-level to mid-range products and are therefore hit harder. Reuters' July–September coverage also reported that Xiaomi had reduced its reliance on low-priced phones to protect profit margins.
IDC's Francisco Jeronimo likewise noted that Chinese vendors with heavy exposure to low-end phones face a difficult choice between maintaining margins and securing sales volume. Omdia also explained in a July analysis that manufacturers had been gradually withdrawing from the low end since the start of 2026. This movement did not begin suddenly in July–September; it has been under way since at least the previous quarter.
Tallying IDC's April–June preliminary data the same way, Samsung and Apple's combined shipments rose by 12.1 million units, an increase of 11.4% year over year. Other vendors, by contrast, fell by 32 million units, or 16.8%. In July–September, Samsung and Apple also slipped below year-earlier levels, but the decline for the other vendors nearly doubled, from 16.8% to 32.1%. In other words, as the overall market drop accelerated, the impact on vendors outside the top two became even more severe.
Soaring memory prices hit low-end phones hardest, and shipments keep falling even as price increases slow
Behind the especially heavy impact on low-end smartphones is the surge in memory prices. The share of memory in a smartphone's bill of materials (BOM) varies greatly by price tier. According to Omdia, in January–March 2026 memory made up nearly 60% of the BOM for models under $400, and more than 64% for models under $99. Because memory accounts for a larger share of cost in cheaper phones, the same percentage rise in memory prices has a bigger effect on the total cost of the device.
These ratios, however, are observations from January–March and do not directly show BOM costs for July–September. Even so, the structure in which the low end is more exposed to memory price surges also shows up in Omdia's shipment forecasts. As of May, the firm projected that global smartphone shipments in 2026 would fall 12% overall, with a decline of more than 22% for models under $400 and growth of 5.7% for models above $400.
The memory supply structure also remains difficult for smartphone makers. Major memory manufacturers are shifting production capacity to high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI and to server DRAM, squeezing supply of memory for smartphones. Counterpoint forecasts that this shift in capacity will cut supply of LPDDR4, used in smartphones and other devices, by more than 40% in 2026. TrendForce, as of May, estimated that average prices for LPDDR4X would rise 70–75% or more quarter over quarter in April–June, and LPDDR5X prices would rise 78–83%.
Meanwhile, contract prices for general-purpose DRAM are expected to rise 13–18% in July–September and 10–15% in October–December. However, the April–June figures refer to average prices for LPDDR4X and LPDDR5X, while the figures from July–September onward refer to general-purpose DRAM contract prices, so they are not a continuous measurement of the same metric. It is therefore not possible to simply link these numbers to compare how much the pace of memory price increases has slowed.
What matters is that even as the pace of memory price increases has eased, the decline in smartphone shipments has not stopped. According to IDC's Nabila Popal, the rise in memory costs in July–September was in the low double digits quarter over quarter, a sharp slowdown from the roughly 50–100% increases seen in the preceding several quarters. Yet the year-over-year decline in global smartphone shipments widened from 6.7% in April–June to 22.0% in July–September. A slower rate of increase does not bring already elevated price levels back down. TrendForce also explained on September 30 that the depletion of manufacturers' stockpiles of relatively cheap components is squeezing smartphone production and that cost increases will continue.
In Omdia's September forecast, smartphones priced under $200 are expected to fall from 40.6% of the overall market in 2025 to 25.6% in 2027. A forecast in which the product mix shifts toward higher price tiers even as total shipments decline is consistent with the skew in vendor-level shipment declines. As profitability on low-end phones worsens, manufacturers are likely moving their product lineups upmarket, while buyers find it harder to get new devices at the prices they used to pay.
Smartphone prices are rising in Japan, too. In a price revision disclosed in mid-July, the lowest price for the iPhone 17 Pro rose about 8%, from about ¥179,800 to ¥194,800. A Kyodo News report carried in the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun said the increase appeared to reflect soaring memory chip prices and the weak yen, while prices were not raised in the United States. Because exchange rates also contributed to the price rise in Japan, it cannot be concluded that memory prices account for the entire increase.
Weak demand also plays a role, and Q4 shipments are the key test
Some argue that the sharp market drop reflects not only soaring memory prices but also weakening consumer demand itself. According to TechNode, shipments in China's market in July–September 2026, as tallied by IDC, fell 15.4% year over year to 57.9 million units, and Huawei was the only major vendor to post double-digit growth. IDC, however, also cited rising memory and other component costs passed through to retail prices, and longer replacement cycles among consumers, as causes of the slowdown in China. Francisco Jeronimo also noted that as higher prices reach store shelves, more consumers are holding on to their current devices for longer.
Counterpoint's Shilpi Jain explained in Reuters' July–September coverage that consumers are increasingly choosing refurbished smartphones and products offering better value for the price. In her April–June analysis, she also noted that what began as a component supply problem has now developed into a demand problem. In other words, a chain of events is under way in which higher component costs raise the price of new devices, which in turn changes consumer purchasing behavior.
Omdia's September forecast likewise cites five structural factors, including longer replacement cycles, an expanding secondhand smartphone market, and technological maturity. It particularly pointed out that older-generation premium models can now be bought at prices comparable to new low-end phones, changing consumers' choices. Samsung's and Apple's shipments also fell below year-earlier levels in July–September, so it cannot be denied that demand is weakening across the market. In Apple's case, however, Counterpoint explained that the absence of a standard iPhone 18 model and low shipments in the launch month also contributed to the decline.
Even taking these demand-side factors into account, the view that the drop is concentrated in the low end does not change. The longer replacement cycles IDC cites are themselves explained as a result of component cost increases being passed through to device prices, so they cannot be separated from the memory surge. In Omdia's analysis, the shift of demand toward secondhand and older premium models is also a factor intensifying competition with new low-end phones. Declining demand and rising manufacturing costs are occurring at the same time, with the impact concentrated in the low end; this explains more readily why more than 90% of the shipment decline fell on vendors other than Samsung and Apple.
China's decline of 15.4% is also smaller than the 22.0% drop globally, so weak demand in China alone cannot explain the sharp global decline. Even if demand trends differ by region, the surge in memory prices acting across multiple markets, and the resulting worsening profitability of low-end phones, must be taken into account.
In a market outlook published on June 1, Counterpoint's Yang Wang explained that the current slowdown differs from the demand-driven declines of the COVID period and 2022–2023, in that it originated on the supply side. Meanwhile, in her April–June analysis, Counterpoint's Jain pointed out that the memory crisis has also affected demand, making it difficult to sell entry-level and mid-range devices at their previous prices. The two explanations are not contradictory; they can be understood as a single chain of change in which supply-side cost increases squeezed device prices and manufacturers' profitability and ultimately spilled over into consumer demand. It is therefore reasonable to see the situation not as one caused solely by soaring memory prices, but as cost increases and weaker demand compounding each other, with an especially large impact on the low end.
Whether this view continues to hold can be tested against IDC's preliminary data for October–December 2026. The indicators to watch are the gap between the rate of decline in Samsung and Apple's combined shipments and that of the other vendors, and the change in the top two's combined share. In July–September, the two groups' rates of decline differed by 27.1 percentage points, and the top two's combined share rose from 37.0% a year earlier to about 45%. If the gap in decline rates narrows to under 10 percentage points next quarter, or if the top two's combined share does not exceed its year-earlier level, the view that the contraction is centered on the low end will need to be reconsidered. Note that the 10-point threshold is a rule of thumb set for this analysis and was not established by IDC.
Conversely, if the gap between the two groups' decline rates stays at 10 points or more in October–December and Samsung and Apple's combined share exceeds its year-earlier level, that would be evidence that the pattern of the market shrinking from the low end first is continuing. What matters going forward is not only how far the smartphone market shrinks, but which price tiers disappear from the market and which manufacturers bear the impact.