Over 150% increase in the space of three months? DRAM reaches new heights!
Having bottomed out in August, DRAM prices have been rising steadily since September, with a clear acceleration in November. This inflation is linked to the gargantuan demand for artificial intelligence solutions and the reorientation of the production lines of the main memory chip manufacturers towards the much more profitable HBM.
The problem is that this inflation is unlikely to ease in the months ahead, and some manufacturers are even predicting a catastrophic situation for 2026 as a whole, with little improvement in 2027 and no real improvement before 2028. Suffice to say, we're going to have to get used to the fact that DRAM prices, and later NAND prices, are barely affordable. The major PC manufacturers are no more optimistic, since they are already counting on price increases for their machines, and seem to be taking advantage of them in the process. Dell has just announced that, from mid-December, it will be increasing the price of its PCs by between 15% and 20%: DRAM has a nice ring to it! Lenovo is set to follow suit early next year, and HP has made no secret of its intention to follow suit.
Samsung and SK Hynix have no intention of significantly increasing their production © Shutterstock
Faced with this situation, there are some happy faces. Samsung and SK Hynix talk of a " supercycle " to explain the current shortage and the fact that it will last for many months, but Samsung is also more honest: " Rather than rapidly increasing our production capacity, we will favor a strategy aimed at maintaining our long-term profitability. We will minimize the risk of overproduction through an investment strategy that balances customer demand and prices ". We now have a clearer understanding of the situation: the major manufacturers have no real intention of increasing production, and prefer to take advantage of the current situation to boost their margins. We can't wait for new players to enter the scene!
