Recently, the storage chip market has been experiencing a significant price surge, driven jointly by the explosive demand for artificial intelligence (AI) computing power and structural adjustments in the supply chain.

Key Dynamics of the Current Storage Chip Price Hike

Key dynamics: In terms of price increases, DDR5 prices have surged over 100% in a single month; the expected Q4 DRAM contract price increase has been raised to 18%-23%, with spot prices of some models soaring 25% in a week. For manufacturer strategies, leading companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix have suspended contract quotations, prioritizing production capacity for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and DDR5 and only opening supply to long-term major cooperative customers. The core driver is the surge in demand for AI servers, which consumes a large amount of wafer capacity, as cloud service providers lock in capacity for the next few years in advance to build computing power infrastructure.

Industry Chain Impact:

International giants: Samsung and SK Hynix have seen substantial growth in revenue and operating profit.

Domestic manufacturers: Companies like Jiangbolong and Biwin Storage have achieved significant performance improvements, accelerating technological substitution.

Terminal market: Some consumer electronics brands face pricing pressure due to rising storage costs. 

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Core Reasons for the Price Hike

The sharp rise in storage chip prices can be understood as a typical "supply-demand imbalance" story, but it is backed by profound industrial transformation.

Supply Side: Structural Contraction and Strategic Shift

Storage chip original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are undergoing a strategic transformation. They are reallocating a large amount of wafer capacity from traditional consumer-grade DRAM and NAND to higher-margin HBM and DDR5 to meet AI server demand. This "robbing Peter to pay Paul" approach has directly led to a sharp drop in the capacity of general-purpose storage chips, causing tight spot supply.

Demand Side: AI Wave Triggers Super Demand

Explosive demand is the fundamental reason. Global cloud service giants (e.g., Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft) are investing heavily in AI infrastructure. AI servers have extremely high requirements for storage bandwidth and capacity, which not only drives up the prices of HBM and DDR5 but also occupies the industry’s overall capacity through their massive procurement volume. Additionally, the expansion of AI applications from training to inference will further increase demand for DRAM.

Market Behavior: Panic Buying Exacerbates Volatility

Faced with the expectation of "supply shortages," downstream server manufacturers and electronic product makers have adopted panic buying. Instead of quarterly purchases, they are seeking long-term supply agreements of 2-3 years, which further intensifies short-term supply-demand conflicts and makes price volatility more severe.

Impact on the Industry Chain

This price surge is reshaping the structure and ecology of the entire storage industry chain.

International Storage Giants

As leaders in the seller’s market, companies like Samsung and SK Hynix have achieved high growth in revenue and profits. Leveraging technological advantages, they firmly hold pricing power for high-end products such as HBM.

Domestic Storage Enterprises

This cycle presents a critical historical opportunity for domestic manufacturers. Through technological breakthroughs and flexible market strategies, they have achieved leapfrog development.

Accelerated Substitution

Amid tightened international supply chains, domestic enterprise-grade PCIe SSDs and other products are being rapidly integrated into the supply chains of leading domestic enterprises, significantly accelerating the domestic substitution process.

Terminal Consumer Market

Consumer electronics products with a high proportion of storage costs, such as mid-to-low-end smartphones, are already facing cost pressures. Brand manufacturers are in a dilemma: absorbing costs internally will squeeze profits, while passing costs on to consumers may affect sales volume.

Future Trend Outlook

Overall, this period of high prosperity in the storage market is likely to continue for some time.

Price Trend

Institutional forecasts indicate that the storage chip price hike may last at least until H1 2026. In particular, prices of HBM and DDR5 are expected to see sharp increases in the next few quarters.

Technological Iteration

The iteration of storage technology is accelerating. OEMs will continue to migrate to more advanced processes (such as 1β/1γ nodes), while next-generation technologies like HBM4 have been put on the R&D and mass production agenda to pursue higher performance and profits.

Localization Process

Driven by both AI and national strategies, Chinese storage enterprises will continue to invest in technological R&D and production capacity. It is expected that by 2027, Chinese storage enterprises will achieve a significant breakthrough in global market share and play a more important role in the global industrial chain.