Memory Companies Have Destroyed the Consumer Market
Since final September, the common worth of SSDs and RAM have continued to climb: costs have elevated by 137% for two TB NVMe SSDs on common, 183% for two TB SATA SSDs, 363% for 32GB DDR5 kits, and 294% for 32GB DDR4 kits, with AVG costs collected from the samples of product listings specified under the chart.
In some conditions, it’s worse: DDR5-6000 64GB kits have climbed from $240 to $1,300-$1,400 on common, a rise of round 483%.
If you had desires of a house server or a high-end engineering design or enhancing machine with 128GB of reminiscence, that’s gone up much more.
We purchased 128 GB of DDR5-6400 GSkill ECC Registered reminiscence in 2024 for $1,060 to make use of in an enhancing machine.
Today, that RAM isn’t even available.
If you obtain comparable RAM, you possibly can get scalped by a third-party vendor for some NEMIX 128GB of an analogous spec for $6,800, or perhaps you’d want 512GB — one thing that used to value $4,200 — for $23,811.
And 99 cents, as a result of fuck you.
In 2024, we additionally purchased a 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro for $390. Today, that same drive is $1,100, or a 254% enhance.
This is the Ok-shaped marketplace. From a single stick of 16 GB to a couple sticks totaling 128 GB, everyone seems to be getting ripped-off. People who wish to play video games for a passion are robbed and individuals who wish to begin a trade that wants a high-end pc may discover it cheaper to lease a system or use cloud computing, which type of looks as if the endgame.
This large diversion to knowledge facilities isn’t simply affecting RAM and SSD costs for PC fans – it’s affecting the prices of all consumer electronics for literally everybody.
According to the IDC:
After Apple increased prices on its MacEbook Neo, MacEbook Air, MacEbook Pro, Mac Studio, iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, iPad Mini, HomePod, HomePod Mini, Apple TV Box, and Vision Pro headset, Apple’s Tim Apple noted in his final earnings call as CEO, “We reluctantly raised costs I’d say and we did it as a result of we’re in what I’d characterize as a 100-year flood on the reminiscence pricing with exponential will increase in reminiscence costs.”
XBOX just lately introduced its latest round of price increases, stating, “Effective August 1, 2026, we can be updating costs worldwide. The worth of XBOX consoles will enhance by US$100 for 512 GB fashions and US$150 for 1 TB fashions. We may also be sunsetting our 2 TB mannequin.” The firm added, “Unfortunately, console storage and reminiscence costs have elevated by greater than 2.5x and we count on one other doubling by the autumn of 2027.”
Amazon raised prices on its Echo Dot, Echo Show 11, Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, Fire TV Stick HD, Fire TV Stick 4K Max, eero 7, and eero Pro 7.
Nintendo inflated its Switch 2 MSRP, and Sony’s already increased its PS5 costs twice throughout the final 12 months.
TechInsights CSO, reported by way of the New York Times, added, “Yes, the costs of your iPhone are going up. But it’s additionally attainable the costs of your M.R.I. machines could go up, or worse than that, that M.R.I. machine could not get made.”
Meanwhile, Chinese newcomers CXMT and YMTC have continued their fast expansions, with YMTC breaking into the global top 3 NAND manufacturers by shipments, surpassing Kioxia, Micron, and SanDisk, and CXMT now holding 10% of the global DRAM market share by revenue, up 6 proportion factors YoY, as reported by Counterpoint Research.
And but being challenged by the United States Government for entrance, regardless of promoting consumer-grade reminiscence.
To us, probably the most regarding a part of that is that the reminiscence suppliers try to lastly bust the cyclical nature of reminiscence pricing, which might imply they wish to remove the longer term low level for costs, particularly for shoppers.
Overview
Long-Term Agreements (LTAs) are made between reminiscence producers and enormous purchasers, usually unnamed. These purchasers virtually definitely embody NVIDIA.
Shortages attributable to AI demand may keep supply just tight enough to maintain the currently inflated RAM and SSD prices for years to come.
Throughout the previous 12 months, all major manufacturers altered their customer relationship strategies, now forming 3-5 year long-term agreements (or LTAs) with, and allocating 50 – 70% of their outputs to only their largest 5-16 customers.
Some type of agreements have been in place with main prospects since, principally, the daybreak of time — however the capability allotted to them and the period are regarding.
Chosun Daily explains:
“LTAs are remodeling the business from a 3–5-year boom-bust cycle right into a long-term order-based mannequin with pre-secured demand.”
In different phrases, the producers went from prioritizing enterprises over shoppers to now prioritizing their 10 largest corporations over all people.
In reality, due to all the main cloud service suppliers and hyperscalers shopping for up all the availability and sending costs skyrocketing, smaller businesses can no longer afford on-site server upgrades, forcing them to lease cloud roads as a substitute.
Fortunately for the hyperscalers, JP Morgan notes, “While LTAs could assist hold prices manageable for hyperscalers, they dramatically lower the pliability of reminiscence fabricators to handle demand for reminiscence chips in client items.”
LTAs Restructuring Market Dynamics
Starting with the long-term agreements, we are able to look to every of the producers’ newest earnings stories:
Micron reported that its 16 LTAs presently symbolize 20% of its DRAM and a 3rd of its NAND provide, noting, “When accomplished, we count on roughly half or extra of our firm turnover to be below these SCAs with prospects throughout finish exchanges.”
SanDisk, whose Datacenter and Edge turnover elevated by 1,298% and 392% YoY whereas turnover for its client section decreased by 5% YoY, reported that it’s allocating 50% of its bit output in 2027 and 67% of its bit output in 2028 to LTAs.
“We are on observe towards our 50% LTA quantity protection for calendar 12 months 28 with key prospects.”
In an earnings name, Samsung stated, “We have already finalized agreements with the highest 5 world knowledge heart prospects, [and] are additionally within the remaining levels of talks with 5 extra main accounts to assist their AI-related demand.” The firm added, “We intend to keep up flexibility in provide allocation and plan to allocate roughly 60% to 70% of our whole capability to long-term provide contracts whereas preserving ample capability to assist prospects with out multi-year contracts.”
And Western Digital’s CEO affirmed, stating, “The final time we reported on LTAs, we talked about having one LTA of a big buyer all the best way as much as calendar 12 months ’29. But we’re very a lot within the throes of discussions with prospects to ascertain LTAs for calendar ’29, ’30 and ’31 as properly. So visibility stays very robust, customer-driven demand for LTAs extending all the best way out to ’31 stays very robust.”
As for the results: our understanding is that these long-term agreements will basically alter the best way the reminiscence market works for shoppers and everybody else. The Korea Herald explains this:
“The shift marks a departure from an business lengthy dominated by quarterly negotiations and short-term orders, probably softening the boom-and-bust cycle that has outlined the reminiscence trade for many years.”
Samsung reiterated this in its newest earnings name, stating, “Historically, the reminiscence business has skilled recurring cycles of upturns and downturns pushed by demand fluctuations in consumer-oriented purposes. However, by rising the share of longer-term backlog-driven trade, we hope to considerably improve the steadiness and visibility of our trade.”
And Samsung’s not alone – all producers are echoing the identical “enhanced visibility” phrase in some method or one other.
One business analyst, reported by way of The Korea Herald, asserted:
“LTAs are unlikely to remove the reminiscence cycle, however they might scale back earnings volatility by locking in demand for longer durations. How efficient they’re will rely upon how the contracts maintain up within the subsequent downturn.”
LTA Customers
Amidst the peak of the scarcity, demand from cloud suppliers continued to extend:
TrendForce anticipates CapEx for the international stage’s 9 main CSPs to extend from $922 billion in 2026 to $1.383 trillion in 2027, explaining:
“The fast enhance can be pushed partly by hovering reminiscence contract costs and sturdy procurement demand. DevelopmentForce estimates that DRAM and NAND Flash mixed will account for 47% of CSPs’ whole CapEx in 2026, with their share rising additional to 68% in 2027.”
Based on DevelopmentForce’s figures, that’d put the 9 largest CSPs’ CapEx spending on solely DRAM and NAND at an estimated $433 billion in 2026 and an estimated $940 billion in 2027.
Luckily for the CSPs, after driving up RAM and SSD prices, smaller businesses couldn’t afford on-site server upgrades, forcing them to rent cloud infrastructure from the CSPs instead.
Amazon’s CEO described the brand new dynamic in its 1Q ‘26 earnings report, explaining, “One of the attention-grabbing issues that we see proper now with the change in worth and provide on issues like reminiscence is that it’s a additional impetus pushing corporations who’ve on-premises roads into the cloud.” He added, “We have seen numerous conversations now we have been having with enterprises for a lot of months […] speed up quickly simply because now we have much more provide than what others have. It can be attention-grabbing to see how that evolves over time.”
That’s it. That’s the quiet half out loud, and the half we’ve all been saying: Amazon, the house owners of one of many international stage’s cloud roads suppliers by way of AWS, is saying that that is pushing corporations into the cloud. That’s not going to cease at corporations.
And the CSPs are already seeing the outcomes. In their newest filings:
Google Cloud’s revenue increased 82% YoY, Microsoft’s “Azure and other cloud services revenue” increased 43% YoY, and AWS sales increased 36.7% YoY, which Amazon notes is its “fastest growth in 18 quarters.”
Breakdown by End Application
For additional reference: In TrendForce’s “Forecast Breakdown of NAND Flash Bit Demand by End Application, 2026-2027” chart, the agency tasks NAND bit demand for server purposes to extend from 44.2% in 2026 to 51.1% in 2027 whereas % of whole bit demand for PC, cell, sport console, and different purposes will every reasonably lower.
In comparability, TrendForce expects DRAM’s bit demand from graphic and server purposes to extend by 1.7 and 1.5 proportion factors, reallocating % of whole bit demand away from PC, cell, and client purposes.
While NAND is primarily solely affected by elevated server consumption, DRAM is closely affected by elevated graphic consumption along with elevated server consumption, as producers prioritize HBM.
Based on DevelopmentForce’s projections, PC purposes will account for five.6% of DRAM bit demand and 11.5% of NAND bit demand in 2027.
Compared to TrendForce’s 2019 numbers, the % of whole DRAM consumption for server purposes is projected to extend by 13.2 proportion factors, and projected to lower by 7.1 proportion factors for PC purposes.
As for a way this all impacts the buyer market: I believe everyone knows…
SSD & DRAM Price Trends | 09/2025 – 08/2026 | GamersNexus
This chart compares AVG costs from September 2025 to AVG costs presently. We collected every entry’s AVG costs from a pattern of particular person product listings that we discovered full worth histories for on PC Part Picker, as specified under the chart.
Based on our samples and since final September:
AVG costs for two TB NVMe SSDs elevated by almost $200, from $143.25 to $340.
AVG costs for two TB SATA SSDs shot up 183%, from $112.33 to $317.67. This is probably going aided in some capability by much less manufacturing of SATA SSDs.
AVG costs for 32GB DDR5-6000 CL30 kits skyrocketed by an insane $445, or 363%, rising from $122.50 to $567.50.
Finally, AVG costs for 32GB DDR4 kits surged from $61.50 to $242.50 presently, or by 294%.
While all costs elevated considerably throughout the final 12 months, RAM seems to have undergone steeper % will increase. Part of this, we’d assume, is as a result of, not like NAND provide which is primarily reallocated to server purposes, DRAM supply is getting hit on both ends, reallocating provide to each server purposes and HBM for graphics playing cards and accelerators.
HDD Price Comparison
For extra comparability, PC Part Picker’s worth traits chart for a 16TB laborious drive illustrates how its AVG worth elevated by almost 129% in the identical interval, from roughly $350 in September 2025 to round $800 presently, with worth will increase actually starting to speed up in April 2026.
Spot Price History | Session Averages | GamersNexus
Here, we’ll check out spot costs. While spot costs aren’t consultant of the contract costs most main OEMs really pay, they’re indicative of demand.
This chart plots the spot worth session AVGs for 16Gb DDR5, 512Gb TLC wafer, and 16Gb DDR4, which we collected from saved dramexchange webpages accessed by way of archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
The 16Gb DDR5 session AVG began round $6 between July and mid September, jumped by about $20 between October and December, and has steadily elevated to its present $54 session AVG since January.
The 512Gb TLC wafer session AVG held round $2.70 between July and September, surged from $3 to $23 between October and March, and has plateaued to round $21 since.
The 16Gb DDR4 session AVG started at round $8.60 in July, skyrocketed to $78 between September and January, dropped to $58 in May, and has continued a gradual climb since, sitting round $91 presently.
It’s principally behaving just like the crypto market. If DDR4 spot pricing had been an altcoin, it’d match proper in with 2018.
Compared to every entry’s session AVG in July, present spot costs have elevated by roughly: 800% for 16Gb DDR5, 678% for 512Gb TLC, and 958% for 16Gb DDR4, with best will increase occurring between October and March.
YMTC Gains
Meanwhile, emerging Chinese manufacturers CXMT and YMTC are gaining on the incumbents.
According to Counterpoint Research, CXMT’s global DRAM market share by revenue has increased from 4% in 2Q 2025 to 10% in 2Q 2026.
This must be terrifying for the incumbents, and perhaps explains why the US is so desirous to ban CXMT whereas US-based Micron scoops up extra trade. If you’re inquisitive about these corporations, we ran a deep-dive documentary known as “The Rise of Chinese Memory” that delves into the historical past of each.
Counterpoint also claimed that YMTC just lately broke into the highest 3 largest NAND producers by cargo share, now surpassing Kioxia, Micron, and SanDisk.
In reality, the Chinese manufacturers are now reportedly looking to expand their market shares outside of China. Jukan, citing DigiTimes, reports:
“As a part of this technique, YMTC is reportedly promoting NAND chips to unbiased third-party module makers, which then assemble them into completed enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs) for purchasers akin to U.S. neocloud suppliers. This oblique route is meant to keep away from sensitivities surrounding the merchandise’ nation of origin. […] With DDR5 and LPDDR5 provides changing into more and more tight, CXMT has reportedly begun product qualification with small and midsized cloud service suppliers in exchanges together with the U.S. and Canada. The firm seems to be in search of to safe prospects early by locking in capability commitments forward of time.”
That mentioned, after Bloomberg reported that Apple was making an attempt to buy chips from CXMT and YMTC, Chuck Schumer did what he does greatest and put his glasses in assault place to write a strongly-worded letter, urging Apple:
“to desert any effort to include reminiscence from CXMT, Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), or some other Chinese state-backed provider into any of its merchandise,” and claiming “American corporations, like Apple, must be shopping for chips stamped ‘Made in America.’”
The WSJ also quoted Commerce Secretary Lutnick as saying, “There need to be ‘different options to the reminiscence situation, nevertheless it’s not nice American corporations utilizing Chinese reminiscence.’”
For context, in late 2023 Micron’s CEO stated, “Today, solely 2% of the international stage’s whole reminiscence manufacturing, DRAM manufacturing, is coming from the U.S.”
Additionally, the National Institute of Standards and Technology notes that Micron’s New York and Idaho fabs presently in development “will assist the U.S. develop its share of superior reminiscence manufacturing from lower than 2% immediately to roughly 10% by calendar 12 months 2035.”
We’d expect that a significant portion of the chips Micron eventually manufactures in the U.S. will be allocated to HBM, making the % of DRAM accessible to shoppers possible even much less.
In different phrases, Micron, the one U.S.-based producer, doesn’t produce sufficient DRAM in America to assist American corporations immediately, nor will it produce enough DRAM in America to support American companies in 10 years, so we aren’t solely positive what ‘other solution’ Secretary Lutnick is referring to until he desires to open a fab on his allegedly lifeless good friend’s island… Restricting imports now will solely hurt American shoppers and folks. Memory can be an unlikely candidate for vulnerabilities, as we mentioned in our Rise of Chinese Memory documentary.
The New York Times, talking with lobbyists asking for presidency intervention, reported, “Some have recommended that promoting chips to a broader set of consumers must be a situation for receiving cash from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a program to fund semiconductor analysis and manufacturing within the United States, three of these folks mentioned. Others have requested the Trump administration to make use of a Korean War-era legislation known as the Defense Production Act to require allocation to industries exterior of A.I., 5 folks mentioned.”
In an interview with Tom’s Hardware, Silicon Motion SVP Nelson Duann noted in regards to the Chinese producers, “Because they obtain authorities assist, additionally they have a accountability to assist keep the well being of the native market. Foreign suppliers typically observe the highest-return alternatives and may allocate most of their provide to knowledge facilities. Chinese suppliers can’t try this in the identical method as a result of the federal government can present steering and encourage them to assist sure native industries.”
We assume it’s ironic that, despite receiving nearly $6.5 billion in government support from the CHIPS act, Micron has no duties to assist our home market or industries. And Micron, too, is a part of the US navy’s reminiscence provide, so this accusation of CXMT’s China-backing continues to fall flat.
Supply Forecast
As for the forecasted provide/demand going ahead:
TrendForce predicts we may even see a light-weight on the finish of the tunnel for NAND ahead of DRAM, citing a larger output resulting from denser-layer NAND expertise, stating, “Boosted by the rollout of latest capability alongside weak client demand, NAND Flash is shifting towards a looser supply-demand construction and can face downward worth adjustment strain within the second half of the 12 months, underscoring a transparent divergence of their market cycles.”
In its “DRAM and NAND Flash Sufficiency Ratios” chart, TrendForce anticipates NAND Flash reaching a optimistic sufficiency ratio, the place provide exceeds demand, someday in 2027, whereas DRAM’s sufficiency ratio is just anticipated to worsen.
That mentioned, not all business leaders share the identical optimism.
In an interview with Tom’s Hardware, a Silicon Motion SVP asserted, “The retail SSD market has virtually disappeared.”
“Suppliers can get some bit progress by transferring to newer NAND generations, however demand is rising sooner. As a end result, the scarcity won’t enhance subsequent 12 months. It will worsen.”
Conclusion
We clearly can’t know precisely how that is all going to play out because it’s getting deep into the way forward for geopolitics, together with the November election. Politics has change into deeply intertwined with the pc {hardware} and chip business, and people political choices to ban, unban, or dole-out cash and for what function will drive pricing.
We do assume that the transfer to larger capability and period long-term agreements will basically alter the market’s historically cyclical pricing nature, possible lowering general pricing volatility, and never in a great way. For shoppers, meaning larger ground pricing. Even if it comes down, it will not be to prior lows. Our greatest hope could be a bubble pop, however that may additionally destroy the marketplace…
We strive to not make predictions in these conditions, as we actually don’t have any distinctive perception right here; nevertheless, if producers are allocating as much as 70% of their capacities as much as 5 years prematurely, we’d assume that offer will stay constrained till the producers are in a position to meaningfully enhance provide by fab growth, which takes a number of years at a minimal.
Going ahead, we’ll proceed to regulate pricing and we’ll make sure you replace upon any significant market adjustments.
