BlockBeats News, June 23rd. Market research firm SigmaIntell stated on the 22nd that due to a supply-demand imbalance in memory, consumer storage product prices have risen across the board in the second quarter of this year. In particular, the prices of low-power DRAM products saw significant increases, with a 75% month-on-month increase for LPDDR4X 4GB and an 89% month-on-month increase for LPDDR5X 12GB.

The background of this price hike is that LPDDR memory has started to be used in the next-generation server GPU platforms. As NVIDIA's Vera Rubin and other AI computing platforms adopt this low-power memory, supply competition has intensified further, and memory manufacturers have expanded the price hikes to include consumer-grade memory used in smartphones and PCs. SigmaIntell stated that some customers have already accepted the price hike, and these changes have been reflected in the market prices.

The supply-side pressure comes from capacity reallocation. SigmaIntell indicated that in the second quarter, storage manufacturers prioritized high-value-added products such as HBM, server DRAM, and enterprise SSDs, leading to a tightening supply of consumer-grade memory. Due to rising costs, some smartphone and PC brands are adjusting their memory orders.

This also implies that the rate of DRAM price increases in the second half of the year may slow down. Compared to mid-to-high-end products, the demand for memory in low-end terminals is expected to cool more significantly.

Currently, semiconductor wafer resources continue to be concentrated on high-bandwidth memory (HBM), resulting in a relative compression of consumer-grade DRAM capacity. While HBM maintains a relatively stable price through annual customer contracts, the supply-demand imbalance remains severe. There is also an industry-wide trend of price increases in general server DRAM, with cloud providers continuing to replenish their DRAM inventory, keeping channel inventories at around two to three weeks' worth.

As a result, the consumer electronics market is under pressure. The expansion of high-value-added memory products, limited additional capacity construction, and low inventory levels have led to a continued shortage of consumer-grade DRAM.

The NAND market is also seeing ongoing price increases. SigmaIntell stated that SSD prices rose by approximately 50% month-on-month in the second quarter of this year. Demand for enterprise NAND products remains strong, and price fluctuations have not weakened purchasing intentions. The expansion of AI clusters and AI agent servers is driving demand for high-performance, high-capacity storage devices.

Price hike pressures have also spread to mobile and PC NAND. UFS prices have seen the highest increase of up to 100% due to the expansion of enterprise SSD demand squeezing the supply. At the same time, the reduced supply of low-capacity eMMC and other low-end NAND has tightened the supply-demand situation for consumer-grade NAND as well.

Overall, the expansion of AI infrastructure is changing the price transmission path of the storage industry. The shortage, which used to mainly focus on HBM and server DRAM, is now being passed down to the mobile, PC, and consumer-grade storage markets through capacity allocation and wafer resource squeeze. For end brands, the increase in memory and flash storage costs may become a key factor in profit margin and product pricing in the second half of the year.