MediaTek and Qualcomm Lose Ground as Memory Prices Reshape the Smartphone Chip Market

Counterpoint Research has published its latest read on the smartphone application processor market, and the picture for the first quarter of 2026 is one of shifting fortunes driven largely by something that has nothing to do with the chips themselves: memory prices. The cost of RAM and storage has climbed sharply, and that single factor is rippling through the entire chipset business.

The logic is straightforward once you trace it. When memory gets expensive, the phones hit hardest are the cheap ones, where every dollar of bill-of-materials cost matters and margins are razor thin. Manufacturers have responded by leaning into higher-end models, where a strong price tag can absorb the added memory cost without wrecking profitability. Buyers, in turn, are gravitating toward those pricier, higher-performance handsets. The product mix across the industry is tilting upmarket, and the chipset vendors who built their volume on the low end are paying for it.

MediaTek still leads, but the lead is shrinking

MediaTek remains the single largest vendor of smartphone chipsets, a position it has held comfortably for years. But its share fell from 38% in Q1 2025 to 32% in Q1 2026, a meaningful slide for a company whose strength sits squarely in the entry-level and mid-tier segments. Those are exactly the segments getting squeezed by the memory situation, so the decline is less about competitive losses and more about the shape of the overall market contracting underneath MediaTek's strongest products.

There are bright spots. The Dimensity 8450 has been a solid performer in the mid-range, riding the popularity of Oppo's Reno15 Pro lineup, including the Reno15 Pro, Reno15 Pro Mini, and Reno15 Pro Max. At the high end, Counterpoint's analysts expect MediaTek to hold the line with the current Dimensity 9500 rather than push out a refreshed 9500+, since device makers appear content to build around the existing flagship part. That restraint makes sense in a market where nobody wants to chase incremental silicon when the bigger constraint is component cost elsewhere in the device.

Qualcomm's quarter got complicated by Samsung

Qualcomm, the second-largest vendor, also saw its share fall year over year, landing at 23% against 27% a year earlier. Part of the story is the same budget-segment weakness hurting its Snapdragon 4 and 6 series chips. But a chunk of the decline traces back to a specific customer decision. Samsung's Galaxy S26 series launched late in the quarter, so the phones were only on sale for roughly a month of the reporting period. On top of that, some S26 variants ship with Samsung's own Exynos 2600 rather than a Snapdragon part, cutting into the volume Qualcomm would normally book from a flagship Galaxy launch.

That last detail is the quiet theme of this quarter: Samsung is increasingly its own chip supplier.

Samsung's Exynos comeback

Exynos shipments rose compared to Q1 2025, lifting Samsung's share to 7%. The growth is not just about the flagship Exynos 2600 sitting inside parts of the S26 line. Samsung has spread its in-house silicon across the mid-range too, with the Exynos 1680 powering the Galaxy A57 and the Exynos 1480 inside the Galaxy A37. Every Galaxy phone that uses an Exynos instead of a Snapdragon is a unit Qualcomm does not sell, which is why Samsung's vertical integration shows up as a double-edged result in Counterpoint's data: good for Samsung's share, a drag on Qualcomm's.

This is the ecosystem dynamic worth watching. Samsung designs phones, displays, memory, and increasingly the processors that tie it all together. The more of that stack it controls, the less it depends on outside vendors, and the more leverage it holds over its own cost structure during exactly the kind of component crunch the industry is navigating now.

Apple's number reflects iPhone strength

Apple sits third on the list at 19%, but that ranking deserves an asterisk. Apple is its own and only customer for A-series chips, so its position in the chipset rankings is really a mirror of its standing as the second-largest smartphone maker overall. Apple's chip shipments climbed on strong iPhone 17 demand, and Counterpoint singles out the iPhone 17e, which outsold its predecessor the 16e by a wide margin. The 17e runs the current A19 chip rather than a downgraded older part, which likely helped its appeal among buyers who want current-generation performance without paying flagship prices.

Unisoc and HiSilicon hold their corners

Unisoc continues to carve out a reliable niche, finishing the quarter at 14%. Its T7250 has been a go-to choice for 4G-only phones, while the T8300 expanded its footprint in 5G, much of it through Redmi devices. Unisoc has quietly become the default option for the most price-sensitive corners of the market, and even with budget volumes under pressure, it held steady.

HiSilicon, Huawei's in-house chip division, dipped slightly to 4%. The encouraging sign for Huawei is demand at the premium end, where the Kirin 9000 chips inside the new Mate 80 series drew strong interest. Like Apple and increasingly Samsung, Huawei's chip numbers are tied directly to its own device sales, a closed loop that insulates it from broader vendor competition but ties its fate entirely to its handset performance.

What the quarter actually signals

The headline is that two giants lost share, but the underlying force is component economics reshaping which phones get built and sold. When the cheapest tiers shrink, the vendors who own those tiers shrink with them, while in-house silicon from Samsung, Apple, and Huawei gains relative ground simply because flagship and premium demand is holding up better. For buyers, the practical takeaway is that the squeeze on budget phones may persist as long as memory costs stay elevated, and the chips inside your next mid-range or flagship handset are increasingly likely to come from the company that built the phone. You can read the full breakdown in Counterpoint Research's analysis.