Google has officially confirmed that its upcoming flagship Pixel 11 smartphone lineup will see higher price tags than previous generations, attributing the cost increase to an unprecedented surge in global memory component costs. Speaking ahead of the company’s hardware launch event, Google Vice President of Devices and Services Shakil Barkat revealed that a severe industry-wide shortage has driven the price of RAM up dramatically, with chipmakers redirecting semiconductor capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for artificial intelligence data centers. Barkat noted that while Google absorbed rising supply chain expenses for as long as possible, the sharp increase in memory bill-of-materials made price adjustments across the entire Pixel hardware family unavoidable. Ahead of the official debut, leaks indicate a potential $100 price increase across models, alongside the elimination of the base 128GB storage tier. To cushion the impact on consumers, Google is offering trade-in promotions while engineering software-level optimizations across Android to reduce RAM dependency in future devices without compromising performance.
