Despite Galaxy S26 sales success, Samsung mobile chief warns of big losses

Due to the RAM crisis, smartphone manufacturers have been forced to increase prices or reduce profits. Samsung’s mobile division had previously suggested it could post a loss, and the company has now sounded the alarm over a full year of losses.

Samsung Mobile chief TM Roh warned company executives that the smartphone division could face losses for the full year money today (H/T: Jukan05 on Twitter), citing “industry sources”.

This would be seriously bad news for the division and would obviously be its first annual loss. This also comes as Samsung’s memory manufacturing arm is expected to post record-high profits.

The outlet also revealed a sobering perspective when it noted that NVIDIA’s upcoming Vera AI CPUs will have 1.5TB of LPDDR5X RAM while its Vera Rubin NVL72 supercomputer will have 36 of these Vera CPUs.

“Given that the Galaxy S26 Ultra is typically equipped with 12GB of LPDDR5X, an AI supercomputer consumes approximately 4,600 times the memory of a smartphone,” it explained. It’s no surprise that consumer tech companies are raising prices and even canceling some releases as they struggle to secure RAM. Things aren’t likely to get any better, as the outlet suggests RAM prices could rise by more than 80% this quarter.

News of the potential full-year loss follows a report last month that Samsung’s mobile division had entered “emergency management” due to rising component prices and the possibility of losses. Under this situation the mobile unit apparently ordered a 30% reduction in costs, as well as economy-class flights replacing business-class seating.

This news also comes despite recent reports that Samsung is selling the impressive Galaxy S26 series. Counterpoint Research reported that initial sales of the new Galaxy flagships were better than the Galaxy S25 series, with double-digit sales growth in the US and Western Europe.