Your smartphones will become even more expensive in just a few months

This year, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) raised its prices for the production of chips. Next year, TSMC is expected (translated source) to further raise costs by another 5-10 percent to combat U.S. tariffs, market fluctuations, and other external factors, leading to more expensive smartphones for the end consumer.TSMC’s chip manufacturing is currently being used across both Apple and Samsung phones. The iPhone 17 phones will use the A19 chips this month, while the Samsung Galaxy S26 series will very likely use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 (or 8 Elite Gen 5) next year. Both the A-series chips and the Snapdragon processors are made at TSMC’s foundries, and the two companies are not expected to stop doing business with the Taiwan-based manufacturer any time soon.

This price hike won’t affect the iPhone 17, including the new iPhone 17 Air, or the Galaxy S26 Ultra and its lower-end counterparts. However, these phones have already been affected by the aforementioned previous price increase made by TSMC this year, which was a bump of 10 percent.

The iPhone 17 — especially the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max — are very likely seeing a price increase this year, and we’ll know for certain when they get unveiled on September 9. For now, the rumored price hike is around $50, which is a lot lower than I initially expected after hearing about ongoing supply chain troubles and the upgrades that Apple is announcing with its newest flagship phones.

Of course, everyone will try to pin TSMC’s price hike on one specific problem — President Trump’s tariffs, geopolitical tensions, or just plain greed — but it’s a lot more complicated. TSMC knows that balancing its price hikes is paramount to keeping it customers around.

This is a major reason for why Samsung wants to shift its phones back over to its own in-house Exynos processors, and why Apple is trying to decrease its dependence on Qualcomm. While it seems like the 2 nm Exynos 2600 won’t be ready on time for the Galaxy S26 phones, there’s always next year.

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