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Boutique system builders, OEMs, and DIY hobbyists have all been spoiled by rock bottom RAM prices in recent months, much to the dismay of memory makers struggling to stay afloat. The latter will get a little help this month, assuming contract prices for DRAM memory chips go up as expected. According to Nanya Technology, as reported by DigiTimes, contract prices are on pace to increase by at least 5 percent in February 2011.
That's good news on the supplier side, which had to weather a 50 percent reduction in contract prices in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to data by DRAMeXchange. A price rebound is on the way, says DRAMeXchange, which notes strong demand for mobile DRAM and cloud computing.
"DRAM vendors are actively adjusting output ratio from commodity DRAM to mobile DRAM," DRAMeXchange says. "Application in smartphone and tablet PC are expected to double mobile DRAM demand year-over-year and content per box will be at least 1GB. Cloud computing service provided by Google, Facebook and others have shown a rocketed growth. Server demand is expected to stimulate an increase in average server content per box from 20GB to 32GB and server-basis DRAM growth rate is about 50 percent to 60 percent."
Of course, if history is any indication, all this could go out the window next month or even next week.
Comments are closed on this article
Danthrax66
February 16, 2011 at 4:04pm
So I;m confused as to why prices would increase? It should decrease quite a bit after the infrastructure to produce the ram is in place. I guess the ram industry works in reverse of actual businesses.
whathuhitwasntme
February 16, 2011 at 3:31pm
I picked up 12gb last week(3x4gb) ddr3 patriot for 150 dollars and has mail in rebates for 20 each module so in theory 90 dollars for 12gb.
You cant get much cheaper than that.
Blaze589
February 16, 2011 at 11:49am
I bought an additional 2 x 2GB sticks of RAM a couple weeks ago from newegg. They were a steal especially since I originally bought them for $99 but got them for $63 with eggsaver shipping. I should really wait for these fortuitous moments before buying RAM in the future.
TechLarry
February 16, 2011 at 11:21am
Well, looks like the industries usual plan is starting to work.
They fly a trial-balloon about prices going up (whether they are or not), the press reports it, people scarf up memory bringing supplies low, which allows them to really raise the prices.
They have always been good at creating their own self-fullfilling prophecies and apparantly it still works :(
Obsidian
February 16, 2011 at 10:23am
Is this the kind of press that is supposed to spur a run on gold? ;) ... seems like maybe the market will stabilize but I doubt we'll see such huge increases in price. With that, the price was so good a few days ago I purchased some RAM from Newegg. The price was so low I just couldn't pass it up. It's certainly hard to see how these prices can continue, yet here we are. Now people expect cheap RAM.
