Google's Made by Google event lands in New York on 12 August, with four devices expected on stage — Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL and Pixel 11 Pro Fold — and Indian pre-orders opening the same day. The leaks have done their usual work. Tensor G6, reportedly codenamed Malibu, reportedly on TSMC's 2nm N2 process with gate-all-around transistors, reportedly 15–20% more efficient than the G5.
Every word in that sentence is a chip word. And the chip is not why your next phone costs more.
Two numbers that explain the whole month
Mobile DRAM and NAND flash prices have gone up roughly 4x since September 2025, with analysts expecting 5x before the cycle turns. And in a budget smartphone, memory and storage now account for more than 60% of the bill of materials.
Put those together and the arithmetic is brutal. The single biggest cost inside a cheap phone quadrupled in under a year. No amount of process-node cleverness on the SoC offsets that, because the SoC is no longer the expensive part.
The cause is not a phone problem at all. It's AI data centre buildout eating the world's DRAM and NAND supply, and phone makers standing in the same queue as hyperscalers with vastly deeper pockets.
What it already did to India
This isn't a forecast. It has been happening since spring.
- 1 May 2026: OnePlus, Nothing, Xiaomi and Realme raised Indian prices by ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 across ranges, near-simultaneously. Simultaneous hikes across competitors are what an input shock looks like, not what a pricing strategy looks like.
- Average selling price: a record $302 in India in Q1 2026.
- Shipments: down 3–5% year on year to roughly 30.9 million units in Q1 2026 — the weakest quarter in years.
- The bottom of the market: supply of phones under ₹10,000 has collapsed, with several brands effectively abandoning the entry tier rather than sell at a loss.
That last point is the one with real consequences. India's smartphone story for a decade was that the floor kept getting better — more phone for the same ₹8,000. The floor has now been removed. The cheapest usable new phone is a different, higher number than it was eighteen months ago, and nothing about that is a feature.
Where the Pixel 11 sits in this
Leaked India pricing for the base Pixel 11 has been reported at around ₹79,999, though other outlets have pointed at a starting figure closer to ₹90,000. Both are leaks. Google has confirmed the date, not the number, and until Wednesday's keynote anyone quoting an India price is quoting a rumour.
But the direction is not in doubt, and here's the uncomfortable part for Google specifically: a flagship is the least exposed device to a memory shock, because memory is a smaller share of a ₹80,000 phone's BOM than of a ₹12,000 phone's. If flagship prices are rising too, the pressure underneath is worse than the flagship numbers suggest.
August's India launch calendar, and the pattern in it
| Device | India date | Segment |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy F70 Pro 5G | 3 Aug | Mid |
| Poco M8 Power 5G | 4 Aug | Budget (sub-₹25,000) |
| Redmi Note 17 5G | 6 Aug | Mid |
| Vivo S2 | 6 Aug | Mid |
| Google Pixel 11 series | 12 Aug | Flagship |
| Vivo V80 series | Mid-Aug (tipped) | Mid |
| iQOO Z11 | 20 Aug | Budget/mid |
Look at what the budget entries are selling. The Poco M8 Power leads with an 8,000mAh battery. The Redmi Note 17 leads with battery. Not one of them is leading with a memory or storage figure, and that is not a coincidence — the spec that used to be the easiest upgrade to advertise is now the one nobody wants to draw attention to.
So: buy now or wait?
The honest answer has two halves.
- Waiting has a defined end date, maybe. Analysts expect memory supply to improve from Q3 2026 as new fab capacity comes online. We are in Q3. If that holds, the back half of 2026 into early 2027 is when configurations stop shrinking and the sub-₹15,000 tier becomes worth looking at again.
- Waiting has a cost. "Analysts expect" has been carrying a lot of weight in this story since January, and the 5x projection is still on the table. A phone that dies in October doesn't care about fab timelines.
The practical read: if you're replacing a working phone in the ₹10,000–₹20,000 band purely for the upgrade, the value on offer right now is the worst it has been in years and there is a plausible case that it improves. If you're buying a flagship, memory pricing is a rounding error against the rest of the bill and the calendar matters more than the cycle. And whatever tier you're in, check the storage variant maths carefully — the cheapest way for a brand to hold a headline price this year is to quietly ship you less of the thing that got expensive.
Specifications, pricing and dates for unannounced devices in this article come from leaks and retailer listings, not manufacturer confirmations, and should be treated as unverified until the 12 August keynote.
