As Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Micron, and other memory semiconductor corporations are reducing older DRAM, the price of DDR4, which is experiencing a severe supply shortage, is expected to rise by as much as 90% in the third quarter of this year.
On the 11th, market research firm TrendForce noted, "The DDR4 market will continue to experience supply shortages and significant price increases throughout the second half of this year," and projected, "LPDDR4X is expected to record the largest single-quarter price increase in almost a decade in the third quarter of this year."
According to TrendForce, the prices of PC and server DDR4 are expected to rise by 38–43% and 28–33%, respectively, while consumer DDR4 is projected to increase by 85–90%. This estimate for consumer DDR4 is more than double the price increase forecast (40–45%) made by TrendForce earlier last month. The price increase expected for mobile DRAM LPDDR4X has also been revised upwards to 38–43%, higher than the previous estimate (23–28%).
Regarding the price increase of consumer DDR4 in the third quarter, TrendForce analyzed, "Consumer DDR4 is used in applications such as TVs, home appliances, networking, and industrial control, but it is particularly suffering from severe supply and demand imbalance as it falls in the supply priority behind PCs and servers."
In the PC market, due to the instability in the supply of DDR4, the price of an 8 gigabyte (GB) PC DDR4 module exceeded that of the latest DDR5 module of the same capacity last month. Additionally, as DDR4 establishes itself as the standard for next-generation AI computing and high-efficiency processing data centers, it is reported that major cloud service providers (CSP) are placing order requests for DDR4 with suppliers.
However, as the adoption rate of DDR5 in servers is expected to expand further next year, the demand for DDR4 in the server market is projected to gradually ease.