Apple almost catches up with Qualcomm, smartphone SoC market shrinks by 21%
The DRAM crisis has not only caused sales of the Nintendo Switch 2 to plummet by over 37 percent, the smartphone market is also struggling with rapidly rising costs for DRAM and NAND flash memory. The DRAM crisis is forcing entry-level and mid-range smartphones to make increasingly significant compromises on specifications, while flagships are becoming even more expensive.
According to the latest data from Counterpoint Research, smartphone processor shipments in the third quarter of 2026 were already down 21 percent compared with the same quarter last year. This is reportedly because consumers are keeping their smartphones longer due to rising prices, while smartphone manufacturers are maintaining smaller inventories so they can respond more flexibly to challenging market conditions.
MediaTek remains the market leader, but due to weak demand for cheaper smartphones, the company is losing the most market share, now supplying only 28 percent of all ARM SoCs for smartphones, down from 34 percent. Qualcomm is still in second place, but the Snapdragon maker's market share is falling from 25 to 22 percent. This is not least because Samsung is once again using an in-house Exynos chip in some variants of the Galaxy S26 series.
As a result, Samsung Semiconductor managed to increase its market share by two percentage points to 8 percent, while Apple achieved a market share of 21 percent with growth of 4 points – almost catching up with Qualcomm. Counterpoint Research expects RAM to become another 5 percent more expensive in the fourth quarter and prices to continue rising next year, which is why the smartphone market is expected to shrink by a further 3 to 4 percent in 2027.
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