Storage surge forces domestic phone price adjustments: Honor's foldable screen new device "guaranteed to increase to the top"

Rising upstream storage prices are increasingly putting cost pressure on domestic smartphone manufacturers.

“Price hikes” to pass on costs have become a necessary survival choice for domestic phone brands amid supply chain turbulence, despite being unavoidable.

On March 10, two major domestic smartphone brands, OPPO and Honor, made significant moves early and late in the day, accurately reflecting different risk-avoidance strategies in the current smartphone market.

This morning, OPPO’s official store took the lead in price adjustments, announcing that starting March 16, 2026, some already released products will be subject to price changes.

The affected products mainly include cost-effective models such as the A and K series and some OnePlus models; meanwhile, mid-to-high-end lines like Find, Reno, and Pad remain unchanged for now.

This differentiated pricing strategy reflects the different realities faced by models at various price points under supply chain fluctuations.

Mid-range models priced around 2000 yuan, which rely on high sales volume with thin margins, have seen their already slim profit margins squeezed further amid soaring storage costs. Manufacturers are forced to directly adjust prices to pass costs onto consumers.

In contrast, mid-to-high-end models priced above 4000 yuan, with higher gross margins, have a stronger ability to absorb increased storage costs.

Facing the same supply chain pressures, Honor’s high-end models are currently adopting a strategy of “small memory, no price increase; large memory, price hike.”

On the evening of March 10, Honor officially announced its new foldable flagship, the Magic V6, with a 12+256GB version priced at 8,999 yuan, the same as the Magic V5.

However, for the “large memory” variant, the Magic V6 added a 12+512GB model priced at 9,999 yuan, matching the previous Magic V5 16+512GB version.

Additionally, Honor increased the prices of the Magic V6’s 16+512GB and 16+1TB models to 10,999 yuan and 11,999 yuan respectively, each up by 1,000 yuan compared to the same memory versions of Magic V5, representing roughly a 10% increase.

In terms of hardware specs like battery, chipset, and display, the Magic V6 has not been downgraded. For example, it features the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 series processor and a Lake Qinghai 7,150mAh battery.

This “maintain the starting price while increasing the top-end models” precise SKU strategy stabilizes the product’s market base and consumer price expectations, avoiding customer loss caused by raising the starting price, while precisely passing the supply chain inflation pressure onto the high-end segment that is less sensitive to price and seeks maximum capacity and top-tier experience.

As OPPO and Honor reveal their strategies one after another, the logic behind how China’s domestic smartphone industry will handle storage cycle challenges by 2026 is gradually becoming clear.

In this defensive battle triggered by upstream inflation, the rigid cost increases in the mid- and low-end markets will ultimately be passed on to consumers.

Meanwhile, in the flagship high-end market, manufacturers are trying to balance profit margins and market share by employing more flexible pricing ranges and stacking advanced technologies.

Under cost pressures, convincing consumers to pay a premium through truly irreplaceable innovative experiences will be the key challenge for all smartphone brands in 2026.

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