Memory shortages set to persist into 2028, warns Micron CEO
Micron has warned that global RAM shortages show no sign of easing, telling investors on its earnings call that it has already sold most of next year's production.
The CEO also admitted that Micron does "not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance".
As most of the capacity is booked for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) needed for AI datacentres, the big three memory manufacturers - which includes Samsung - have very little dedicated to consumer-grade memory, which caused their prices to shoot up.
That has, in turn, pushed up the prices of pretty much every consumer electronic device that uses these chips, including game consoles like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2 - all of which have gone up in price several times in some cases. Valve's Steam Machine also launched at a much higher price than Valve expected, and the company hinted it may even have to raise prices again.
The company plans to bring new factories online in 2028, backed by $25 billion in planned capex for the first half of its new financial year, but executives cautioned that the extra capacity won't bring immediate relief on price or availability.
Mehrotra explained that HBM is growing in demand faster than the DRAM used in servers, and said Micron is working to lift its margins on HBM, which currently trails DRAM in profitability.
That said, Micron's cloud memory unit, which covers HBM, posted an 83 per cent gross margin in Q4, up from 59 per cent a year earlier, while its core datacenter business, selling more DRAM, hit 90 per cent, up from 41 per cent. Datacenter SSD sales almost hit $10 billion for the quarter, over 1,000 per cent higher year-on-year.
The company also highlighted its work with Nvidia on NV-HBM, billed as the industry's first custom HBM4E implementation for next-generation GPUs and NVLink Fusion platforms, and said AI-driven demand for context memory storage is widening the market for its NAND-based SSDs.
Samsung, one of the largest manufacturers of memory and storage in the world, also recently delivered bad news for anyone hoping the global component shortages will ease up soon, revealing in an earnings call that it expects the crisis to continue getting worse into next year.
