Malaysia's 10.10 sale is on, and plenty of phones are marked down across the online stores. The one place the discounts are hard to find is the bottom of the range. The cheapest phones on our buying guides have held their prices or quietly climbed through the sale season, while pricier models have been cut.
It lands amid a global shift. Rest of World reported on 5 October that prices of existing smartphone models have risen about 15% worldwide this year, citing Counterpoint, while newly launched phones cost roughly 25% more than last year's. Rest of World traces the cause to a global memory chip shortage, as AI data centres compete for the memory supply that phones also rely on. It reported that Chinese makers including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Huawei have cut back their lowest-margin entry projects and steered the memory they can get to higher-end devices.
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The cheapest tier is thinning out
The numbers abroad are stark. Citing the research firm Omdia, Rest of World noted Oppo's sub-US$100 phone shipments in Southeast Asia fell 96%, and Vivo pushed its main entry model above US$100 in most markets. It reported, citing 91mobiles, that Xiaomi lifted the price of a 128GB Redmi 15C in India from 12,499 rupees (about US$140) at launch last December to 16,999 rupees (about US$190) by June, a 36% jump. More than one in four smartphones shipped globally in 2025 cost under US$150, per IDC figures in the same report, and a Counterpoint analyst quoted in it expects that floor to drift toward US$250 or even US$300.
What our own price tracking shows in Malaysia
We check the daily price of the phones on our buying guides, and our own tracking shows a local version of the same pattern. These are the lowest listing prices we track for each phone, checked every day, before any checkout vouchers or coins. They are not official recommended prices, and they do not cover every retailer or every phone sold in Malaysia. Among the most-clicked budget phones on our guides over the past three months, the cheap end has not been discounted this sale season.
The Redmi 14C, one of the cheapest current phones on our guides, has a listing price of RM439 today. It sat at RM399 through the first half of September, dipped to RM378 late in the month, then stepped up to RM439 on 4 October and has held there since. That is dearer than at any point we recorded in September. The Poco C71 has stayed at RM279 every single day since 15 September, and the older Redmi 7 has not shifted from RM485. Each of these prices held for at least three days at both ends of the window, which filters out one-day listing blips.
The discounts in our tracking sit a tier up, and they began in late September rather than on 10 October itself. The Poco M7 Pro 5G fell from RM879 to RM669 on 28 September, a 24% cut it has held since. The OPPO Reno14 F slid from RM1,200 to RM999 on 26 September, down 17%. Both are genuine cuts to the listing prices we track. Neither is a phone for a first buyer on the tightest budget. This is not a like-for-like test, these are different models, but across the budget phones we looked at the split fell the same way: the cheapest did not come down, the pricier ones did.
Why it matters for Malaysian buyers
The entry tier is where a lot of first phones and hand-me-downs begin, so a quiet floor under the cheapest models is felt by the people with the least to spend. The global squeeze we reported earlier this month does not reach shoppers here as a dramatic jump in a sticker price. By our reading it shows up more quietly, in the cheapest phones simply not taking part in the discounts that land on pricier models.
Our wider tracking points the same way: in the fortnight into 10.10, more of the tech prices we follow rose than fell. For anyone shopping the very bottom of the range this week, our data shows no sign of a deep cut at the cheapest end this sale season. The steadiest price we track right now is the Poco C71, unchanged at RM279 since mid-September.
Images courtesy of Daniel Romero and NSYS Group on Unsplash.
