Smartphone Prices Jump Rs15,000-30,000 Across Pakistan on Chip Costs

Every major mobile phone brand sold in Pakistan has raised prices by Rs15,000 to Rs30,000 per handset since August, dealers and manufacturers told Dawn in a report published October 26, pointing to a global rise in memory-chip costs rather than any new tax.

Muhammad Rizwan Irfan, president of the Karachi Electronics Dealers Association, said there had been no significant tax increase that would explain the scale of the rise. He attributed it mainly to the rising cost of chips used in handsets. Mian Abdul Rehman of the Pakistan Mobile Phone Manufacturers Association went further, blaming higher RAM and ROM costs linked to surging global demand for AI hardware, which he said has outpaced memory production. Manufacturers, he said, are struggling to absorb the higher input costs themselves.

What shoppers are actually paying

Dawn's reporting, drawn from interviews at Saddar, the Sareena Mobile Market in Buffer Zone and the Abdullah Mobile Market in North Karachi, put the scale of the increase in concrete terms. A phone with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage that cost around Rs22,000 a few months ago now sells for roughly Rs40,000. A budget smartphone with the same specifications cost about Rs20,000 as recently as last year; it now sells for more than Rs30,000.

One customer told Dawn that a model he wanted had cost Rs22,000 to Rs23,000 in August, risen to around Rs30,000 the following month, and climbed further since. A shopkeeper described a phone that used to sell for Rs20,000 now going for Rs30,000 to Rs35,000. Among the customers Dawn spoke with were a woman shopping for her daughter and a man buying a replacement after his phone was snatched, both citing the higher prices as an unplanned strain on their budgets.

Why dealers say taxes aren't the cause

Some consumers interviewed blamed government taxes, and others pointed to the broader disruption from the US-Iran war on trade and component shipments. But the two industry figures Dawn quoted on the record both pointed instead to the cost of chips themselves. That lines up with reporting on the global memory market: a TrendForce forecast reported by The Register in February said DRAM contract prices were on track to rise 90-95 percent quarter-on-quarter in early 2026, with NAND flash up 55-60 percent and the LPDDR4x and LPDDR5x memory used in smartphones facing what the outlet called the steepest increases in their history. The driver, according to that forecast, is AI hardware demand from hyperscale data centres straining the same factories that supply handset memory, with no significant price relief expected before 2028.

No government official was quoted in Dawn's report, and neither the finance ministry nor the Federal Board of Revenue has issued a public response to the price rise. Dawn said consumers are calling on the government to find a way to keep basic smartphones affordable.

What it adds to household budgets

The increase lands on top of a year in which weekly inflation readings have continued to move, and alongside other big-ticket consumer costs that have climbed even as headline inflation has eased, such as the financing costs behind this year's slump in car sales. A smartphone has become a practical necessity for banking, remittances and official paperwork in Pakistan, and dealers' accounts suggest replacing even an entry-level handset now costs a third to a half more than it did months ago, independent of any change in the rupee's exchange rate against the dollar on the dollar rate page.

What to watch

Neither the Karachi Electronics Dealers Association nor the Pakistan Mobile Phone Manufacturers Association has said when global memory prices might ease, and no government body has signalled whether it will intervene. Dawn's reporting did not name specific brands or models, so the full market has not been independently surveyed beyond the Karachi retailers interviewed.

Build Better Pakistan's Economy Desk is tracking smartphone and consumer-electronics prices and will follow up if dealers, manufacturers or regulators respond.