According to a new report, fluctuating costs have left Samsung struggling to finalize pricing for the upcoming Galaxy S26 series, all while the company is losing money every time it sells a Galaxy Z TriFold.
The Bell reports that Samsung is losing money on each Galaxy Z TriFold device it sells, with the production cost being higher than the actual selling price of 3,594,000 won (about $2,500 USD).
While Samsung hasn’t acknowledged that aspect, the company did comment on the decision to keep the price lower than initially expected. During the launch earlier this month, Samsung’s Lim Sung-taek hinted at how tight the pricing is, saying (translated):
This is a special edition product, so rather than selling it in bulk, we prepared it so that those who want it can try it out. There were various issues, such as the memory price, but we made a grand decision to reduce it and achieve this difficult price.
The Galaxy Z TriFold is already Samsung’s most expensive foldable to date by a considerable margin, so with the company not turning a profit on this first device, it begs the question of what a future sequel might cost.
On that note, it’s also unclear what the upcoming Galaxy S26 series will end up being priced at, and that’s something even Samsung is still struggling to figure out. The same report brings out that Samsung hasn’t yet figured out the price of the Galaxy S26 series with its February launch date coming up quickly. A major part of the struggle, the report mentions, is the high cost of memory. The cost of RAM has grown considerably in recent months due to demand from AI products and shifting production away from general RAM to the high-bandwidth memory needed for AI. Using Snapdragon chips as the “main processor” found in the Galaxy S26 lineup is also making the price tough to settle on.
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series was initially expected to be a considerable shift for the company, with the base model becoming a “Pro” while the middle-child “Plus” would be cut for a slim Galaxy S26 Edge. The poor sales of Galaxy S25 Edge, though, led to Samsung ditching all of those plans – including a long-overdue camera upgrade – and preparing a lineup similar to the past few years. As such, it’d probably be a tough sell to hike prices, especially as Samsung has felt pressure after Apple opted not to raise the prices of the iPhone 17 lineup.
The Galaxy S26 series is expected to launch in February, with the Galaxy Z TriFold also set to hit the North American market sometime in early 2026.
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