Lenovo reckons high memory prices are not a nasty blip, but the new normal for battered buyers.
The company has warned that DRAM and NAND prices may never return to early 2025 levels. That is rotten news for anyone hoping SSDs and memory sticks might stop costing silly money.
At ISC 2026, Lenovo showed a slide laying out the current price path for DRAM and NAND products. Prices started going bonkers around the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth quarter of 2025.
Today, those prices have reached levels that would previously have sounded like a reseller’s fever dream. Lenovo thinks the pain will continue as shortages drag on.
The memory market is being squeezed by AI data centre demand, which has turned boring old RAM into the new oil. Everyone now needs it, and the suppliers know exactly where the wallets are.
Micron has already said the situation is out of its hands and that it cannot meet demand, even for strategic top-level customers. Samsung and SK Hynix have been making similar noises while counting lovely AI boom profits.
A related report claimed Micron blamed the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple for part of the mess. Job’s Mob allegedly “took advantage” of the last down cycle to “pay rock-bottom prices,” which discouraged capacity expansion.
Job’s Mob then hiked prices and let the Tame Apple Press blame evil AI instead of its own pricey gouging. Apparently, margin preservation is now a natural disaster.
Lenovo said new fabs and extra production capacity from the big DRAM and NAND suppliers will barely dent the supply gap. The joke was that prices would not return to the old levels.
Lenovo’s presenter suggested higher prices could become normal moving into 2030 and beyond. That makes “RAMageddon” less of a gag and more of a procurement forecast.
For ordinary punters, this means dearer memory modules and SSDs. It means pricier PCs, consoles, mobiles and anything else with storage or memory inside.
The cheap upgrade era could be getting stuffed into a shallow grave behind the AI data centre. Cloud giants want high-bandwidth memory, and consumers are left paying for the leftovers.
SK Hynix is reportedly trying to fast-forward its 2040-plus roadmap to 2030-plus. The plan would triple memory output by then.
Even that might not be enough. If AI infrastructure keeps expanding at its current clip, extra fabs could arrive just in time to keep prices painfully high.
