Team Group’s general manager Gerry Chen has issued a stark warning: the memory industry has officially entered a severe shortage, and prices are skyrocketing — with the pain only just beginning.
December Contract Prices Jump 80–100%
According to Chen, DDR5 and SSD prices have already doubled or tripled compared to earlier in 2025. Overall DRAM contract pricing for December is up 80–100% month-on-month, with year-over-year increases reaching a staggering 171.8%.
This isn’t a short blip — Chen describes it as the start of a multi-year upcycle, with the most intense pressure expected in the first half of 2026 once distributors finally burn through existing inventory.
Why This Is Happening
- AI is eating all the wafers: High-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI accelerators now dominates production capacity at Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron.
- Commodity DRAM and 3D NAND are being starved of wafers as fabs prioritize the far more profitable HBM.
- New fab construction takes 2–3 years — meaningful relief won’t arrive until late 2027 or 2028 at the earliest.
Who Gets Hit Hardest
| Segment | Expected Impact (2026 H1) |
|---|---|
| Mainstream PCs & laptops | Severe — memory now 20–25%+ of total BOM (up from mid-teens) |
| Chromebooks | Significant shipment drops expected |
| Cloud/Hyperscalers | Even Tier-1 U.S. & Chinese giants only secured ~70% of needed 2026–2027 supply |
| Gaming, industrial, defense, medical | Relatively protected — lower volume, higher margins |
The Inventory Illusion Is Over
Many buyers believed they had locked in safety stock for 2026–2027. In reality, cloud giants have already taken the lion’s share, leaving little buffer for consumer and enterprise channels.
What Team Group Is Doing
- Prioritizing supply to strategic AI and high-margin customers
- Shifting product mix away from price-sensitive consumer segments
- Protecting gaming, industrial, and specialized markets where possible
Bottom Line for Consumers and Builders
If you’ve been putting off a PC upgrade or memory expansion, now is the time to act. Prices that doubled in 2025 are set to climb even higher through mid-2026, with no real relief in sight until 2028.
Stock up while retail inventories still exist — once they’re gone, the only question will be how high prices can go.
Sources: DigiTimes, via Tom’s Hardware
