Amid skyrocketing prices, another storage manufacturer has suspended pricing for its product.
According to Taiwan's DigiTimes, citing supply chain sources, Samsung Electronics has taken the lead in suspending October DDR5 DRAM contract pricing, prompting other memory manufacturers such as SK Hynix and Micron to follow suit, which will lead to a supply chain disruption. The resumption of pricing is expected to be delayed until mid-November.
It points out that in the fourth quarter, upstream manufacturers only provided quotes to leading technology companies or first-tier cloud providers, and almost no DDR5 production capacity was released to other general customers, indicating that the storage market "has completely entered a seller's market." Moreover, the supply strategies of the three major storage manufacturers will become increasingly stringent in the future, offering quotes only to long-term customers; this also means that manufacturers not providing quotes may become the norm, forcing customers with urgent needs to turn to the spot market to grab goods.
Industry insiders revealed that although it is now a market consensus that memory contract prices will rise in the fourth quarter, the previous expectation was that the fourth-quarter contract prices would be finalized before the end of October. However, Samsung has been reluctant to provide contract quotes, directly telling downstream customers that "there is no stock to sell," causing DDR5 spot prices to surge by 25% in just one week.
The contract prices for the fourth quarter have not yet been finalized, but the report suggests that DDR5 prices are expected to surge in three consecutive quarters from the fourth quarter of this year to the first half of next year, with each quarter seeing an increase of 30%-50%. Based on this, the price of DDR5 16Gb could reach as high as $30 in the first half of 2026.
In fact, DRAM spot prices have risen quite dramatically in the past month. Among them, DDR5 16Gb has seen the most astonishing price increase: at the end of September, the price was $7.68, and recently it has jumped to $15.5, a 102% increase in a single month.
The key reason for the surge in DRAM prices lies in AI.
A recent TrendForce report indicates that Server DRAM contract prices in the fourth quarter benefited from global cloud providers expanding their data centers. The scale of the market has increased, and the upward trend has strengthened, driving up overall DRAM prices. Although the fourth-quarter DRAM contract prices have not yet been fully released, suppliers' willingness to raise prices has clearly increased after receiving additional orders from cloud vendors. The agency stated that it has raised its fourth-quarter price forecast for Conventional DRAM from the previous 8%-13% to 18%-23%, and that it is "very likely to be revised upwards again."
Dongcai Illustrated Guide: Some Useful Tips
(Article source: CLS)
