Samsung and SK hynix are acting like the DRAM party is nearly done.
A South Korean report claims Samsung and SK hynix have “virtually abandoned the one-year memory short-term supply contract method with global big tech companies and decided to supply products only through the three- to five-year long-term supply contract (LTA) method.”
You can spin this as sensible planning, with both firms wanting a clearer picture of demand before they crank up capacity in a way that does not end in tears.
There is a less fluffy read, though, and it fits the way the memory market usually behaves. Locking in prevailing pricing makes more sense when the suppliers think the next leg up is limited.
This comes after Samsung reportedly hiked DRAM prices by 30 per cent quarter-on-quarter for Q2 2026, following a 100 per cent year-on-year jump in Q1 2026.
If Samsung does not deliver a meaningful bump for Q3, the long-term-contract push starts looking less like prudence and more like a top signal.
NAND sits in a different bucket, with UBS expecting NAND prices to peak in the third quarter of 2027.
One factor is Google’s TurboQuant, which reportedly compresses DRAM-based KV cache, while leaving NAND demand untouched.
Another is Chinese suppliers such as YMTC leaning harder into DRAM, tightening NAND supply by shifting where the wafers go.
KB Securities is feeding the hype machine too, predicting Samsung’s operating profit of 327 trillion won (€189bn) in 2026 and 488 trillion won (€282bn) in 2027, putting it nose-to-nose with Nvidia on profitability.
That is a lot of confidence resting on memory pricing discipline, and the next quarter’s contract chatter will make it obvious who is blinking first.
