Khaberni - Mohamed Talaat, the head of the Mobile and Telecommunications Division at the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, said that the prices of smartphones manufactured in Egypt have increased by about 20% in recent days.
Talaat added, in a phone call Saturday evening with the program "Al-Hekaya" broadcasted on the channel "MBC Egypt," that the prices of phones manufactured in Egypt are higher by about 20 to 30 thousand Egyptian pounds than abroad.
He continued: "Before the (crisis) prices of (global) RAMs, our prices in Egypt were indeed more expensive than those abroad, so you would find a phone costing forty thousand pounds before the RAM increase ... in Egypt it's sold for something like sixty thousand."
He attributed the price increase to the rise in raw material costs due to a shortage of memory chips resulting from the artificial intelligence boom, and said the manufacturers that produce phone raw materials have changed their production lines "from smaller things to bigger ones, which of course makes them earn a higher profit margin, so that's what led to the price increase because the quantities aren't produced in the amounts that were needed before."
Memory chips represent a global crisis currently, with their prices rising due to memory chip manufacturers allocating most of their production for artificial intelligence, which is experiencing a boom at present, leading to a shortage of chips available for phones and other devices.
Several phone manufacturing companies have warned that device prices are rising due to the memory chip crisis.
Talaat, in his phone call, mentioned that this increase in component prices coincided with Egypt's decision to cancel the customs exemption for phones coming from abroad for personal use, adding that the prices of random access memory components abroad have risen with their shortage, which applies to all globally manufacturing phone companies.
Egypt decided in January 2026 to cancel an exemption it had granted to phones imported from abroad for personal use from a tax that amounts to 38% of the phone's price, attributing the decision to its progress in localizing smartphone manufacturing, where more than 10 million locally produced phones were made over a year, representing more than half of the country's smartphone consumption.
The head of the Mobile Division believes that the phone market in Egypt currently lacks competition in light of the current rules and conditions, repeating his suggestion to form a joint committee from the Mobile Division at the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, the Competition Protection Authority, the Consumer Protection Agency, and from the House of Representatives to monitor prices, especially after the rise in prices due to the memory chip crisis.
He said that this committee would work on comparing the prices of phones in Egypt with those abroad to understand the cause of this significant increase.
Proposal for exempting Egyptians abroad
A member of the Egyptian House of Representatives, Amal, proposed exempting Egyptians living abroad from paying the tax imposed on personal mobile phones when they enter the country, in exchange for transferring at least $5,000 through the official channels of the state during the year to ease the burden on workers abroad.
The representative, in a phone call Saturday evening with the program "Hazrat Al-Mowaten" broadcasted on the channel "Al Hadath Al Youm," said that the proposal includes granting an Egyptian resident abroad a customs duty exemption for introducing one or two devices for him and his first-degree family members against this amount.
She added that this proposal would prevent any potential trading or smuggling of phones, explaining that Egyptians abroad actually transfer amounts exceeding $5,000, but some of it is lost through illegitimate channels.
