DRAM produced by ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) of China has begun to be applied for the first time to some products from global PC manufacturers. However, supply volumes are extremely limited, and it is said to be focused on budget laptops sold in some markets outside the United States.
According to Nikkei Asia on the 4th, major PC makers such as HP, Asus and Acer completed certification procedures for CXMT DRAM in the middle of this year and began applying it to some laptop models. Industry officials said the products are being sold outside the United States and that the applied volumes remain small.
CXMT is currently giving priority to supplying production volumes to major Chinese information technology (IT) corporations including Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance Ltd., so the volumes available to supply global PC companies are known to be limited.
PC makers are taking a cautious stance on adopting CXMT. Because Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron, the three incumbent global memory players, account for most of the market, they cannot ignore their relationships with them.
A PC industry official told Nikkei Asia, "The memory market currently favors suppliers," and said, "It is not easy to adopt CXMT products on a large scale." Another supply chain official explained, "For now, only a tiny amount is being used in budget models, but this is about securing a new source of supply amid ongoing shortages."
Recently, the PC and smartphone industries have faced shortages of memory and central processing units (CPUs). Market research firm IDC projected that, due to memory supply constraints, global PC shipments this year will fall by more than 11%, and it noted that the shortages could continue through the end of the year.