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IC Insights has predicted that DRAM prices will continue to increase this year:
According to IC Insights, DRAM prices will continue to increase even though they have more than doubled (+111%) over the last 12 months. IC Insights predicts that by the end of the calendar year DRAM's price per bit will have jumped a record 40% (or more).
[...] Of course, the record pricing levels are great for our friends at the major foundries. Samsung, Micron, and Sk Hynix are also raking in their own record profits and enjoying healthy margins. We have both DRAM and NAND shortages occurring at the same time, which is great for the foundries, and unless a player breaks ranks to gain market share, we can expect more foot-dragging before any of the foundries increases output.
The booming mobile industry and server markets are exacerbating the issue, so you would expect that the fabs would boost DRAM output. Unfortunately, the three primary fabs (Micron bought Elpida, reducing the number of players) don't share the same vision.
IC Insights indicates that Micron will not increase production capacity, instead relying upon improvements in yields and shrinking down to smaller nodes to boost its DRAM bit output. Sk Hynix has expressed its desire to boost DRAM output but hasn't set a firm timeline for fab expansion (unlikely to occur in the near term). Samsung is as tight-lipped as usual, so we aren't sure of its intentions.
In the 1980s there were 23 major DRAM suppliers, but cutthroat pricing and continual oversupplies eventually led to the wave of consolidation that left us with the current three suppliers.
Previously:
December 2015: DDR4 Memory Prices Declined 40% in 6 Months
May 2017:
DRAM Price Surge Continues
Samsung Set to Outpace Intel in Semiconductor Revenues
July 2017:
Micron Temporarily Suspends Operation of DRAM Production Facility
Samsung Increases Production of 8 GB High Bandwidth Memory 2.0 Stacks
August 2017:
DRAM Prices Continue to Climb
Samsung & SK Hynix Graphics Memory Prices Increase Over 30% In August
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:53PM (2 children)
Oligopolies almost also suck. Always have, always will. Telecoms, the big-3 in Detroit before Japanese competition, Wintel, etc. are examples of self-protecting crap. They use "economies of scale" as an excuse, but the value of competition is usually greater than the benefit of economies of scale.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gault.Drakkor on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:13PM (1 child)
Economies of scale do help the corporation as an individual corporation. Competition hurts the individual corporation in the short term. So from corporations point of view its a win-win to have fewer players.
Whether or not they share those benefits of economies of scale is a different issue. As you suggest, sharing is strongly influenced by how much competition there is.
My problem with what you said is that you seem to be merging it to being one point of view, that oligopolies, and monopolies suck. Which is false, where very clearly some parties benefit.
I do agree with you in that once again shows; if there are large barriers to entry, which chip fabs represent, capitalism doesn't work so well. So this implies there should be market regulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:14AM
I meant from a consumers' standpoint. Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg obviously loves oligopolies.