Report: DRAM Prices to Continue Increasing in April
The price of DRAMs continued to increase in 2H March 2013 and expected to continue rising in April.
Earlie
r this month, reports began to surface that vendors would be increasing the retail pricing of graphics cards by 10 to 15 percent due to the rising cost of DRAMs, specifically DDR3 memory. These predictions have now been corroborated from DRAMExchange who noted that in the second half of March 2013, the average price for 4 GB and 2 GB of DDR3 has increased to $23.50 and $14.00, a respective increase of 2.17 percent and 1.82 percent.
DRAMExchange forecasted that the increase will continue through April, the upward momentum will strengthen as OEMs maintain DRAM inventory, and that it is not unlikely for a 4 GB DDR3 module to approach the $30 mark.
On the supply side of the equation, DigiTimes reported that Samsung has made efforts to accelerate its mobile DRAM production due to higher-than-expected demand for the Galaxy S4, which was led to a widened product gap for PC DRAM chips. Due in part to the 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan and Apple's rumored plan to release more than one phone this year, the tightened DRAM supply situation is expected to further worsen in Q3 and Q4 2013.
Can you say cartel? Happened before, will happen again - google "DRAM price fixing" or "memory cartel" and form your own opinion.
Earthquake in Taiwan (8 Apr 2013) affected production - but that doesn't explain the rise.
Let's name the bitches last time (€331m fine - http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-586_en.htm , also multi 100m$ fines and multiple admissions of guilt in the US too..) : Micron, Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya
But maybe I'm just a paranoid crank this time? State of California and 32 other states don't think so eg http://www.law360.com/cases/50769e27e9be1a076500438d or http://www.law360.com/cases/5075dac5f662aa0c8a00438c ..
etc etc. Last time the proceedings took 8 years - so don't hold yuor breath for a legally binding decision
I didn't know Samsung was going into the gas industry. I guess they'll get sued by Exxon-Mobil soon...
The main problem here In my opinion is that the DDR4 is not out yet, nor it is needed for modern CPU, therefore there is no such boost for new RAM.
Looks like the PC market is finished, I just hope that sooner or later the manufacturers like Intel for example will realise that they could make more money by lowering the price...
If it was price fixing, Elpida would not have gone bankrupt.
For a good chunk of of the past two years, DRAM manufacturers were selling at or even below cost just to keep their fabs running to avoid the several millions it costs to stop and restart production lines. The price increases simply bring things back to a point where surviving manufacturers can start recovering their losses.
Then what, pray tell, are you wasting your time trolling a PC tech website, there, chief?
If you want to talk about insane, I paid ~$400 for 256MB of RAM 13 years ago so $33 for 4GB still looks ridiculously cheap to me.
It isn't much of a surprise that 4GB DIMMs have much lower $/GB than 2GB ones since most of the cost of a 2GB DIMM is the DRAM die packaging, PCB, retail/OEM packaging and distribution which are common costs for all DIMM sizes.
BTW, one of Hynix's DRAM fabs got shut down by a fire last week so expect prices to go up quite a bit.