Small businesses are reporting better sentiment, but they’re still operating under constraint: recent NFIB survey data says 62% say supply chain issues are actively affecting them, which means pricing, timing, and availability are not normalizing. That constraint is showing up in tech inputs directly—memory is becoming a dominant cost driver, with forecasts calling for a meaningful smartphone shipment decline in 2026 as entry-level devices get squeezed. And upstream suppliers are the ones capturing the value: Broadcom is posting outsized growth and holding strong margins as AI infrastructure demand concentrates pricing power at the component layer. The company experienced a 29% year-over-year revenue increase in the fiscal first quarter, as indicated in its earnings call.
Omdia’s latest Smartphone forecasts are pointing to a 2026 shipment drop driven by one thing: memory cost and availability. And the impact is asymmetric—entry-level volume gets squeezed while premium holds, which is exactly how scarcity redistributes margin and forces segmentation.