Samsung and SK Hynix warn of prolonged memory market crunch

12 articles · Updated · South China Morning Post · Apr 30

Samsung said on its first-quarter earnings call that fulfilment rates hit a record low, while customers were already pre-booking memory capacity for 2027.
Executives said supply was far short of demand, and production-ready capacity for next-generation HBM4 was fully booked as orders rose for HBM, DRAM and enterprise SSDs.
SK Hynix finance chief Kim Woo-hyun said AI-driven demand was increasing across major customers and the current memory price upcycle was likely to last longer than past industry cycles.

Is the AI memory boom creating a 'consumer chip winter' with pricier, less powerful devices for the public?

With HBM fully booked for years, what rival technologies could emerge to challenge its dominance in AI hardware?

How will soaring memory prices and US tariffs reshape the global technology supply chain and manufacturing strategies?

How vulnerable is the entire AI industry to the single Japanese company supplying a critical material for HBM chips?

Could a breakthrough in AI software efficiency burst the current memory demand bubble and strand billions in investment?

Are chip giants creating a permanent memory class divide between elite AI systems and everyday conventional computing?