SEOUL / LONDON (IT BOLTWISE) – Samsung is facing a major challenge: rising component costs and an ambitious sales target for the Galaxy S26 series are putting the company under pressure. Despite the inevitable price increases, Samsung hopes to regain its market share.
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Samsung is currently facing a dilemma caused by two opposing forces. On the one hand, there are the rising prices for components, which are driving up production costs. On the other hand, the South Korean company has set an ambitious sales target for the upcoming Galaxy S26 series, which requires competitive pricing and higher marketing spending.
The company plans to sell 35 million units of the Galaxy S26 series next year. A new report from South Korea shows that Samsung is targeting 130 trillion won ($90.3 billion) in 2026 revenue for its smartphone-centric MX division, split between 240 million smartphones and around 27 million tablets sold.
Samsung’s MX division aims to sell 24 million units of the Galaxy S26 series in the first half of 2026, compared to the 22 million units of the Galaxy S25 series sold in the first half of 2025. Samsung also expects to sell 5 million units of the fold and flip phones, which are scheduled to come onto the market in July.
Samsung’s ambitious sales targets suggest that the company is trying to regain the market share it has lost to other OEMs in recent years. However, these ambitious plans are at odds with current industry dynamics, which are characterized by component price inflation.
A separate report from Taiwan suggests that a price increase for the upcoming Galaxy S26 series is inevitable due to the rising cost of key components. Samsung had launched the Galaxy S25 series in South Korea at the same price as the S24 series, but price stability will not be possible for the upcoming series.
The cost of key smartphone components, including application processors (APs), continues to rise. According to Samsung’s half-year report in August, mobile AP costs rose 12 percent year-on-year, while camera modules saw a cost increase of 8 percent.
The increasing demand for HBM for AI workloads is increasingly depleting global DRAM capacity, leading to shortages and price increases for mobile LPDDR5. The price of a 96Gb LPDDR5 has increased by 16 percent compared to the first quarter of 2025.
Meanwhile, Xiaomi has already increased the selling price of its Redmi K90 model released in October. Chinese OEMs such as Oppo and Vivo are also pursuing price increases.
Goldman Sachs indicated in a recent report that smartphone gross margins will remain under pressure over the next 12 to 18 months. This industry paradigm is not conducive to Samsung’s ambitions for the Galaxy S26 series.
TrendForce has revised its forecast for conventional DRAM prices in the fourth quarter of 2025 upward, from an earlier forecast of 8 to 13 percent growth to 18 to 23 percent, with a high probability of further upward revisions.
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