The memory market has seen a dramatic turn in the past few days, with RAM prices in mainland China dropping aggressively, but market watchers are smelling a rat.
For those not in the know, memory industry watchers have suddenly found it less dull after months of DRAM prices climbing and PC parts sliding into shortage territory.
However, with Google’s TurboQuant landing, suppliers such as SK hynix, Samsung and Micron took a market-cap battering, triggering ‘panic’ throughout the supply chain.
TurboQuant is being treated like a magic wand that cuts memory needs in AI buildouts, as if Jevons’ paradox never existed and inference loads will not keep swelling.
Taiwanese outlet UDN says RAM prices in China have dropped by more than 30 per cent, dragging DDR5 pricing down with it.
Retail pricing “collapsed” during the weekend, with memory dropping by more than 100 yuan in a single day (about €12.6). Some retailers are blaming consumers for stepping back once shortages started to bite, yet plenty of people in the industry are blaming an algorithm rather than a genuine fix.
But the fact that DDR5 prices are slipping and the rumour that shortages are over do not align with supply chain chatter.
Suppliers have supposedly lost ‘hundreds of billions’ in market capitalisation in the past week, which makes hoarders and scalpers think demand is falling off a cliff. That perception is enough to spark an inventory dump, even if the underlying need for bits and bytes has not gone anywhere.
At best, this situation brings temporary relief to gamers who might be waiting on purchases, and we expect prices to drop more steadily across US retailers, but these drops could be short-lived, depending on how the memory markets evolve.
