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For a decade the second-hand phone market ran on one dependable rule: prices only go down. That rule broke this year, and the reason has almost nothing to do with phones. It starts in data centres buying memory chips faster than anyone can make them.
High-bandwidth memory is the stacked DRAM that sits beside AI accelerators in data centres. It is made on the same production lines as the ordinary memory inside your laptop and your phone, and it earns the manufacturer an estimated three to five times more revenue per wafer.
Faced with that arithmetic, Samsung, SK hynix and Micron have done the obvious thing and pointed capacity at HBM. Every wafer that becomes high-bandwidth memory for a server is a wafer that does not become conventional DDR5 for a consumer device. SK hynix has described its HBM, DRAM and NAND capacity as essentially sold out for 2026. Samsung's memory leadership has warned of significant shortages continuing through at least 2027.
The move has been fast and large. Samsung raised the price of a 32GB DDR5 module from $149 to $239 in September — a 60% jump in one step. DDR5 contract pricing has more than doubled.
TrendForce has repeatedly revised its forecasts upward as the year has gone on. Conventional DRAM contract prices were expected to rise 55–60%; the estimate was raised to 90–95%. NAND flash went from 33–38% to 55–60%. Even into the third quarter of 2026, conventional DRAM contracts were still climbing 13–18% quarter on quarter.
Memory is not a rounding error in a device's bill of materials. It is one of the largest single line items in a phone or a laptop, and there is no substitute for it.
Gartner's February assessment was blunt: combined DRAM and SSD prices up around 130% by the end of 2026, adding roughly 13% to smartphone prices and 17% to PC prices against 2025 levels. It expects the demand response to match — worldwide PC shipments down 10.4% and smartphone shipments down 8.4% across the year.
Manufacturers have responded in the two ways available to them. Some have raised prices. Others have quietly held the price and cut the specification — less base storage, less RAM, for the same money. TrendForce has tracked both happening across smartphone and notebook brands.
A price rise is visible. A storage downgrade is not. If this year's entry model ships with half the storage of last year's at a similar price, the real price increase is larger than the sticker suggests — and last year's higher-specified device quietly becomes the better product. That is a direct transfer of value into the second-hand market, and it is invisible unless you are comparing generation to generation.
Second-hand phones have historically behaved with almost boring predictability. They shed roughly 1% of their value a week — about half their value over a year. Refurbishers price against that curve; trade-in desks are built on it.
This year the curve bent the wrong way. Reporting in the Wall Street Journal in August, Nicole Nguyen noted that preowned prices have been rising rather than falling because of the memory crunch. Sean Cleland, a vice president at wholesale marketplace B-Stock, gave the paper a concrete example: the average price of the company's best-selling handset, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, rose from about US$530 in January to US$560 by May.
A 6% rise over four months does not sound dramatic. Set it against the historical baseline and it is extraordinary. On the old rule that phone should have lost roughly a fifth of its value over the same period. Instead it gained. The gap between what happened and what should have happened is close to 25 percentage points.
The transmission is not mysterious. It runs through three mechanisms, and all three are pointing the same way at once.
That last one is the slow burn. Today's shortage of new-device sales is next year's shortage of two-year-old trade-ins. The current shipment decline — 8.4% fewer smartphones this year on Gartner's numbers — is a supply constraint on the refurbished market of 2028.
| Model | Best price today | RRP | Off RRP | Seller |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 16 128GB | A$909 | A$1,399 | −35% | Back Market AU |
| iPhone 15 128GB | A$687 | A$1,399 | −51% | Reebelo AU |
| iPhone 14 128GB | A$476 | A$1,399 | −66% | Back Market AU |
Our own Australia figures, checked 26 August 2026. These are the lowest verified prices we found, not averages.
Put our own current numbers against that. The iPhone 16 at A$909 and the iPhone 15 at A$687 sit A$222 apart. That gap is the entire financial argument for buying one generation back — and it is exactly the gap memory costs are compressing. If the incoming generation gets dearer while the outgoing one holds its value, the saving narrows from both ends at once.
One caveat on our own figures, stated plainly: this is a snapshot, not a time series. We can show you today's verified prices and the published research on where component costs are heading. We cannot show you our own before-and-after, because we have only been recording verified prices at this level of rigour recently. Treat the direction as well evidenced and our specific numbers as a current reading.
Longer than most people expect, and the timeline is set by construction schedules rather than sentiment. New Samsung and SK hynix capacity is not expected before the second half of 2027. Micron's Idaho DRAM production starts mid-2027. AI demand for high-bandwidth memory shows no sign of easing — customers are already reserving supply years in advance.
There is one genuine countervailing force. Consumers have limits, and the market has started to find them: reporting in 2026 has noted the price surge beginning to cool as buyers simply stop paying. A shortage only sustains a price if someone is still willing to meet it. Falling shipment numbers are what that resistance looks like in the data.
For refurbished specifically, this is an odd moment. The category has spent a decade selling on a simple promise — the same device, materially cheaper. That promise still holds. But the size of the discount is being squeezed from both ends, and anyone telling you second-hand prices only fall has not looked at the market this year.
AI data centres. High-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators earns manufacturers an estimated three to five times more revenue per wafer than conventional DRAM, so Samsung, SK hynix and Micron have shifted capacity toward it. That leaves less production for the ordinary memory in phones and laptops. SK hynix has described its 2026 capacity as essentially sold out.
Gartner estimates combined DRAM and SSD prices will rise around 130% by the end of 2026, adding roughly 13% to smartphone prices and 17% to PC prices against 2025 levels. It also expects PC shipments to fall 10.4% and smartphone shipments 8.4% as buyers resist.
Yes, and that is genuinely unusual. Used phones normally lose about 1% of their value a week. The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2026 that preowned prices have been rising instead, citing B-Stock data showing the average iPhone 15 Pro Max rose from about US$530 in January to US$560 by May.
Sooner is currently the stronger position. Buyback desks have been raising offers to secure stock in a tight market, which is unusual. That window depends on the shortage persisting, and reporting in 2026 suggests the surge has begun to cool as consumers hit affordability limits.
Not quickly. New fab capacity from Samsung and SK hynix is not expected to ramp before the second half of 2027, and Micron's Idaho DRAM production begins mid-2027. The more likely near-term brake is demand rather than supply — buyers refusing to pay, which is already visible in falling shipment forecasts.
Yes. The discount is narrowing, not disappearing. What has changed is that the traditional seasonal price crash after a new launch is shallower this cycle, because the incoming model is itself more expensive — so waiting is a weaker strategy than it used to be.
Component and market forecasts are third-party estimates that vary by source and are revised frequently. They are used here to show scale and direction.