According to DigiTimes Asia, SanDisk has significantly increased its November NAND flash memory contract prices by 50%. This move highlights the rapidly tightening supply in the memory market, driven by both the continued demand from AI data centers and a severe shortage of wafer supply.

SanDisk Price Adjustment

The report, citing market sources, stated that SanDisk's price adjustments have sent shockwaves through the storage supply chain, prompting module manufacturers such as Transcend, Innodisk, and Apacer Technology to suspend shipments and reassess their pricing. Transcend, in particular, suspended pricing and shipments starting November 7th, anticipating a "continued positive market environment." In other words, "prices may continue to rise before stabilizing."

To understand just how hot the memory industry is, consider these figures:

Transcend reported consolidated revenue of NT$4.11 billion (US$133 million) for the third quarter of 2025, a 27% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 63% increase year-over-year, with a gross margin of 45%. Net profit increased by 334% year-over-year.

Innodisk reportedly saw its revenue increase by 64% year-over-year to NT$3.8 billion (US$123 million), with net profit increasing by nearly 250%.

Apacer Technology also appears to be keeping pace, with third-quarter revenue reaching NT$3.22 billion (US$104 million), a 70% increase year-over-year. All three companies attributed their revenue growth to the centralization of supply at foundries that prioritize the production of high-margin DRAM, such as DDR5 and HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) for AI servers and high-performance computing devices. However, the problem lies in the current shortage of older DDR4 products—while still crucial for industrial and enterprise systems—further driving up prices for downstream products.

AI workloads

This mirrors the situation across the entire chip industry this year: AI workloads have taken over. Foundries are dedicating more production lines to cutting-edge memory for GPUs and accelerators, leading to shortages in general-purpose memory such as consumer SSDs, embedded modules, and mainstream DDR4. The result? Memory vendors' profits soared, while OEMs and end-users scrambled to keep up. DigiTimes notes that Transcend expects the market's "uptrend" to continue as companies need to balance price increases with limited capacity.

If you're considering upgrading existing equipment or expanding your data center capacity, now might be the time to act. With rising NAND flash memory prices from SanDisk and a continued shortage of DRAM, the price trend for solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules is only one direction: upward, not downward. Historical experience shows that memory manufacturers, once they smell profits, won't rush to expand supply overnight. Artificial intelligence is still consuming every remaining chip the industry can produce, and this shortage could persist until 2026 - unless the AI bubble suddenly bursts, but even then, our economy will face even greater challenges.

DRAM prices surged 172% year-on-year

According to a recent report by CTEE, DRAM memory prices have surged 171.8% year-over-year, making it one of the most valuable assets across a wide range of applications, from data centers to home PCs. If you're assembling a PC and find your desired memory kit has skyrocketed in price, you're not alone. DRAM shortages have driven these modules to exorbitant prices. This is primarily due to the growing demand from artificial intelligence, with memory and storage supplies nearly exhausted as data centers continue to expand.

Even more worrying is that South Korean memory giants like Samsung and SK Hynix are unable to fulfill all orders, currently only completing 70%. This leaves only 70% of orders fulfilled for Tier 1 cloud service providers in the US and China, depleting the safety stock that most buyers thought they had built up. Memory module manufacturers like Kingston and ADATA now have to pay $13 for a 16GB DDR5 chip, compared to just $7 six weeks ago—a massive increase that wipes out their entire gross profit margin. Even more concerning is that smaller OEMs and channel distributors are told their order fulfillment rates are expected to be only 35% to 40% by the first quarter of 2026. If this situation continues, it will not only delay their planned product launches but also jeopardize their expected revenue. They face a choice: either gamble everything on high profits in the spot market or leave their production lines idle.

By checking popular websites like PCPartPicker, which cover almost all product prices, we noticed that a G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 memory kit, which once cost around $106, is now listed at $239 on Newegg. This alone confirms the price increase, and we can only hope the situation will improve. However, simply hoping is not enough. ADATA CEO Chen Libai boldly declared that the last quarter of this year would mark the beginning of a significant price surge in the memory industry, foreshadowing an impending supply shortage. Similarly, the CEO of Phison Electronics stated that the NAND flash memory shortage could last for up to a decade.

Source: Content compiled from Semiconductor Industry Observer

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