British tech company Nothing has officially canceled the launch of the CMF Phone 3 Pro, a midrange model that was meant to follow last year’s successful CMF Phone 2 Pro. Co-founder and vice president Akis Evangelidis said on X that the company had been developing a successor, but current memory costs no longer allow it to build a phone that would deliver a meaningful upgrade at a price that makes sense for the CMF value brand.
Industry estimates say a handset with the same specifications as the previous generation would now cost Nothing about 50% more to make, pushing up the retail price and undermining the point of the affordable label. The decision is the first public sign of a broader industry shock nicknamed “RAMageddon,” as demand for AI infrastructure from companies such as Microsoft, Google and Meta is consuming huge quantities of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, made in the same facilities as DRAM for smartphones and laptops.
That shift has led Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron to redirect major production capacity toward data centers serving Nvidia and its partners, creating a global shortage and driving consumer memory and storage prices sharply higher, with prices roughly doubling over the past year. Recent market research from Gartner and Counterpoint says memory has become the most expensive component in a smartphone, accounting for more than 50% of material cost and overtaking both the processor and the display.
The crisis is not the first for mobile makers, but it is different because there are few engineering compromises left to make when basic components become too expensive. Gartner analysts warn that cheap, entry-level phones could nearly disappear by 2028 if manufacturers refuse to build devices with zero or negative margins. Some companies, including Apple, are instead passing costs to buyers, while Samsung and Xiaomi are trimming memory in lower-end models and focusing more on premium phones. Used and refurbished device sales are rising as customers avoid higher prices, and in the short term, shoppers hoping for an affordable upgrade may need to keep their current phones longer or pay much more.
