Micron, the world's No. 3 memory semiconductor corporations in the United States, said that as the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) services concentrates available production capacity on high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a severe supply shortage is continuing in legacy industrial memory segments such as smartphones and PCs.
Manish Bhatia, Micron's executive vice president and head of operations institutional sector, said in an interview after a groundbreaking ceremony for a DRAM plant near Syracuse, N.Y., on the 16th (local time), "Smartphone and PC makers are lining up to secure volumes beyond 2027, and Autonomous Driving cars and Humanoid Robot will further amplify this demand." With major manufacturers concentrating production capacity on HBM that goes into AI chips, "the supply shortage we're seeing is truly unprecedented," he said.
Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron's chief executive officer (CEO), also said on a conference call in Dec. last year, "Along with the supply shortage, sustained and strong demand is tightening (the memory) market conditions," adding, "We expect this situation to continue beyond 2026." Micron said its AI memory is fully booked through this year's volumes. To prioritize supply to strategic corporations customers such as Nvidia, Micron decided in Dec. last year to halt its popular consumer memory brand "Crucial."
Market research firm Counterpoint Research estimated in a report in Dec. last year that global smartphone shipments could fall 2.1% this year as expense rises and production comes under pressure due to memory shortages.