Global I/O Smartphones: UBS Evidence Lab Inside 2Q26 Smartphone Survey: Softening, but not cratering

Research evidence excerpt

Global I/O Smartphones: UBS Evidence Lab Inside 2Q26 Smartphone Survey: Softening, but not cratering

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Global I/O Equities

GlobalSmartphones

Semiconductors

UBS Evidence Lab Inside 2Q26 Smartphone

Nicolas Gaudois

Survey: Softening, but not cratering Analyst

nicolas.gaudois@ubs.com

+65-6495 5148

David Vogt

Replacement cycle has started to lengthen

Analyst

On the back of memory semis supply shortages as well increasing pricing, smartphone david.vogt@ubs.com

unit Sell In remains soft. Sell Through units are down 7% YoY YTD through May (source: +1-212-713 4296

Counterpoint). Wave 23 (2Q26) of our UBS Evidence Lab Smartphone Survey (> Access Randy Abrams

Dataset) indicates 12-month purchasing intent of 36% of total respondents, down HoH Analyst

and flat YoY (from 40%/36% in 4Q25/2Q25). We note that, after initial production cuts randy.abrams@ubs.com

on the Android side (vs. stable to up for iPhones) in 1Q26, smartphone suppliers have +886-2-8722 7338

largely seen stable trends at a rebased down level. Still, further device price increases Timothy Arcuri

could trigger some lengthening of the replacement cycle. Only 24% of respondents Analyst

indicated being ready to pay >10% more for their next smartphone. We already note timothy.arcuri@ubs.com

that the expected time for smartphone replacement out of our respondents' sample has +1-415-352 5676

lengthened to 30.8 months from 29.6 in 4Q25. All in all, we maintain our forecast for Jimmy Yoon

smartphone industry unit Sell In at 1.14bn or -10% YoY for 2026, and 1.16bn or +2% Analyst

YoY in 2027. jimmy.yoon@ubs.com

+65-6495 4617

Memory costs continue to go higher Sunny Lin

We now estimate memory to account for 40% of the bill of material (BOM) costs of Analyst