- The head of SK Hynix believes that the RAM crisis will get much worse
- The CEO said that 2027 will be the ‘worst year’ in the history of the RAM industry and that the crisis is likely to roll on to 2030 and beyond
- Bank of America analysis also claims that SK Hynix’s expansion of memory production capacity will fall well short of its 2028 target
We keep getting told that the RAM crisis is dug in as a fixture for the foreseeable future, and whether you want them or not, here are a few more unwelcome reminders.
First, Android Headline highlighted a Pakinomist interview with Kwak Noh-jung, CEO of SK Hynix, one of the major memory chip makers. The CEO had no comforting words about the outlook for RAM prices in 2027, observing: “We predict that next year will be the worst year in [memory] the history of the industry from the perspective of supply.”
So next year will apparently see RAM hit peak prices, with no relief before 2030 (as previously predicted by the chairman of parent company SK Group) according to the CEO – and even then he suggested that demand will continue to outweigh supply as the next decade rolls on beyond 2030.
The other RAM-related blow comes from analysis by Bank of America highlighted by the Commercial Times in Taiwan (via Wccftech ), which casts doubt on the South Korean president’s recent boast about greatly expanding the country’s total memory chip production by 2030.
Part of that analysis is a claim by a memory industry insider in Taiwan that SK Hynix may add just one-sixth of its originally planned production capacity increase in 2028. Obviously, that claim needs to be heavily spiced, but it’s such a big potential shortfall that it’s bound to raise some eyebrows.
The Commercial Times notes that while major new chip factories are being built by SK Hynix and Samsung in South Korea, it will take much longer than 2030 to come fully online – and this process is more likely to take a full decade. The report claims that a realistic level of memory wafer capacity expansion for South Korea is around 10% (or slightly less) per year, which would leave the country well below the president’s 2030 production requirement.
Analysis: divergent RAM timelines
It is gloomy news from the CEO of SK Hynix, so although the skeptics will of course quickly point out that it is the CEO’s job to talk up the company’s value – in the form of a booming market and the struggle to meet demand – after the debut on the Nasdaq. Share prices around the major memory chipmakers have been turbulent of late, it should be noted, as investors begin to worry about whether these companies are currently overvalued — and indeed, whether the AI boom may be starting to run out of momentum.
So that’s a consideration, but there’s no doubt that SK Hynix’s boss isn’t the only person making gloomy predictions along these lines. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he expects the RAM crisis to last “quite a few years,” indicating we’ll be stuck in price hell until 2030 or so, though others don’t see it that way. In the opposite camp, we notably have people like an AMD executive, the former head of Samsung’s semiconductor division, and Jefferies, an investment banking firm, who all believe that RAM prices will start to ease in 2028.
But the sting in the tail is that Jefferies also predicts large memory price increases for the rest of this year, and also in 2027, he backs the CEO of SK Hynix in that regard. When you consider the estimated massive shortfall of SK Hynix’s production capacity increase based on the rumor mill, things feel distinctly shakier in the near term for RAM prices.
I also can’t help but remember the blow Microsoft recently delivered when we were talking about Xbox price increases, when the company informed us that it expects another doubling of RAM costs in just over a year (by fall 2027).
Although there is a mixed bag in terms of long-term predictions, the outlook for this year and next remains worryingly negative on the RAM front.
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