Samsung have become the latest company to declare that the ongoing memory crisis isn’t going away or getting better any time soon. The chip makers think the RAM shortage will only get worse in 2027 and supply of the tech won’t stop being squeezed until 2028 at the earliest.
TechCrunch report Samsung bigwigs said as much during a recent Q2 earnings call, revealing that AI labs have been “sharing their medium-to-long-term demand forecasts” with the RAM makers directly in the hopes of locking up future supply.
As much as this means Samsung’s sales of devices like smartphones and TVs will continue to suffer the negative effects of the memory crisis, with higher component costs driving up prices for consumers, the company are doing well out of AI firms begging for oodles of RAM. That demand from the AI companies gives Samsung leeway to push such firms to sign long-term contracts which, at least in theory, help secure Samsung’s financial future against any sudden drying up of demand for memory.
As long as AI firms are bending over backwards to horde RAM in huge quantities and can promise the money to pay for it, Samsung are under no pressure to lower prices or pivot back towards prioritising making the kind of RAM consumer devices like PCs need. The fact that neither Samsung nor competitors SK Hynix and Micron have moved to take advantage of the industry’s push towards providing for AI datacentres by reversing course to fill the demand left on the consumer RAM side, likely making a ton of money selling more reasonably priced RAM for regular devices in the process, is at the centre of an ongoing US lawsuit which accuses the firms of fixing RAM prices and supply.
It is worth noting that since Samsung outlined these predictions for the future of the RAM crisis in an earnings call, meaning that their primary goal would have been seem as profitable as possible to shareholders. Still, reasons to believe the memory shortage will blow over soon feel pretty thin regardless of where you look at the moment.