联发科发布2nm天玑9600 Pro，但发布日期早已预告且内存涨价压制手机需求

TAIPEI - MediaTek is working with customers to optimize the computing performance of its mobile chips in response to a memory chip supply crunch that is driving up the cost of components.
The world's largest smartphone chip developer by shipments announced the launch of its latest premium smartphone chip, the Dimensity 9600 Pro, on Tuesday. The chip is built with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s leading-edge 2-nanometer manufacturing technology, the same used to make Apple's core chip for the premium iPhone 18 Pro series and its first foldable smartphone, the iPhone Duo.
JC Hsu, senior vice president and general manager of wireless communications at MediaTek, said average selling prices for smartphones have risen significantly as memory prices surge, and that his company is working with multiple customers to address that issue.
"We do see that prices for many end devices need to rise significantly because of higher memory costs," Hsu told reporters.
"We are working closely with multiple customers on technologies that can help reduce the memory footprint while achieving the same computing performance, and therefore help alleviate some of the pressure from rising prices," he said.
Hsu acknowledged that the price for premium system-on-chip (SoCs) for smartphones has gone up this year due to the rising price of advanced manufacturing nodes and other cost increases. "We are among the first wave of companies globally to adopt TSMC's most advanced 2-nanometer technology and one of a select few partners working very closely with TSMC on both design and manufacturing," Hsu said.
"On such a tiny chip [the Dimensity 9600 Pro], we have 33 billion transistors, along with central processing units, graphics processing units and neural processing units that enable better on-device AI computing."
The company said its neural processing unit can reduce power consumption by 40% when running artificial intelligence models of the same size compared with last year's premium chipset, while delivering a 50% increase in computing performance, according to Will Chen, vice president of wireless business group with MediaTek.
MediaTek is a key phone and mobile chip supplier to Samsung Electronics, Google, Oppo, Vivo, Amazon and Xiaomi. The company said its clients will introduce smartphones with the Dimensity 9060 Pro chipset this month and that they will be available for customers likely next month.
The average selling price of smartphones is expected to jump 21% to $565 in 2026 from $467 last year, according to research company Omdia's forecast, as device makers prioritize value over volume to cope with the unprecedented memory crunch and broader supply chain constraints.
Apple, for example, is focusing on three high-end models, with the iPhone 18 Pro starting at $1,199 with 256 gigabytes of storage. At the very top end, its new foldable iPhone Duo costs as much as $3,199 for the 2-terabyte version. Huawei's latest triple-fold smartphone Mate XT2 with its own developed chipset starts at 19,999 yuan ($2,980).
The global smartphone industry, however, is expected to see shipments fall 14% amid a severe component crunch and rising costs, according to Counterpoint Research.
Besides its longtime flagship phone chip business, MediaTek also works with Google to develop AI computing chips for data center servers, while it also partners with Nvidia to work on a laptop chipset for the agentic AI era. The company is now Taiwan's second most-valuable company after TSMC thanks to its partnership with Nvidia and Google and its new AI chip business.