- A new report from TrendForce gives us optimistic information about the RAM crisis
- It looks like retail prices are falling in the US, Europe and especially China right now.
- However, the overall picture hasn’t changed much, according to memory chip makers, but we can still hope that this is the start of a change, at least for consumers.
If you were hoping for good news on RAM pricing, well, there are some glimmers of light on the horizon, although we’d obviously be very foolish to get carried away with optimism.
VideoCardz spotted several positive signals coming primarily from analyst firm TrendForce, which has a new report (based on multiple sources) on how RAM prices are falling now.
This includes recent observations we’ve already reported on, such as the German retail market seeing a 7% drop in DDR5 RAM prices in March (which was echoed elsewhere in Europe). The report notes that this is also being reflected elsewhere, namely in the retail markets of the United States and China, where it is happening even more pronounced.
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Wccftech recently noted that a 32GB DDR5 RAM kit from Corsair had dropped in price by 20% in the US, for example, and in China, 16GB DDR5 units have dropped between 25% and 30% since hitting peak prices in January through February (this is on “local e-commerce platforms”).
32GB kits in China have also fallen 15% or more, we’re told, and Harukaze5719 on
And on top of all that, we’re told spot prices have fallen dramatically at one of Shenzhen’s major electronics trading hubs, with 32GB RAM modules dropping in price by as much as a third in some cases.
Part of the reason behind this is that consumers are looking at the now sky-high RAM prices – which, despite the declines seen, are still ridiculously expensive, certainly in the US and Europe – and simply refuse to buy. This is an inevitable “softening” of consumer demand, as TrendForce puts it.
In the bigger picture in terms of technological developments, we also have Google’s TurboQuant, which reduces the memory demands made by AI. And as Hardware Canucks points to
Analysis: a welcome drop in retail
So what to do with all this?
On the one hand, TrendForce notes Bai Wenxi, vice president of China Enterprise Capital Alliance and chief economist for the China region (via Chinastarmarket.cn): “Looking ahead, I expected that the structural imbalance between supply and demand would gradually ease, and prices of 16GB DDR5 modules could normalize by the end of 2026.”
This, presumably, refers to the Chinese market, and no other forecast indicates that RAM prices will stabilize this year, at all. Even the brightest predictions say this won’t happen until 2027 at the earliest (and many estimate 2028, and others still believe normalization won’t happen until the end of the decade).
Additionally, TrendForce makes it clear that Taiwan-based memory chip makers “generally maintain strict pricing discipline,” so their profits are not falling significantly (yet). TrendForce says: “Contract prices have held firm so far, and demand for HBM and server-side DRAM has remained largely intact, with major suppliers reportedly locked into multi-year deals with key customers.”
So this appears to be mostly a drop in actual retail prices, although it’s obviously great news for consumers, even if the big RAM vacuums out there on the business side aren’t getting much of a break.
The report concludes: “Overall, the current DDR5 price correction appears to be a short-term consumer-driven adjustment, rather than a definitive sign of structural deterioration in demand.”
Still, I’ll take it, and there’s a small avalanche of more optimistic predictions here, which are definitely welcome compared to the overall highly negative vibe around memory price increases. As always, we must look to the coming months and cross our fingers that retail prices continue on this downward path.
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