News More memory price increases blamed on Taiwan earthquake, but hikes were happening months before, and major manufacturers aren't based in Taiwan

[Admin]

TrendForce reports continued increases in memory prices for NAND and DRAM, pointing at the Taiwan earthquake and hugely increased demand as root causes. Several major manufacturers aren't even based in Taiwan, and production cuts last year were intended to bring about higher prices.

More memory price increases blamed on Taiwan earthquake, but hikes were happening months before, and major manufacturers aren't based in Taiwan : Read more

 

[Order 66]

This doesn't surprise me, companies always blame price hikes on everything but corporate greed.

 

[Udyr]

Yeah... those estimations were way off.

 

[JTWrenn]

The market has become so manipulated. We need more fabs and more players to fight over market share instead of colluding on price. Samsung is too dominant in this market right now. Fabs are turning into the new OPEC, and we need to break that now before it gets worse.

 

[_Shatta_AD_]

The market has become so manipulated. We need more fabs and more players to fight over market share instead of colluding on price. Samsung is too dominant in this market right now. Fabs are turning into the new OPEC, and we need to break that now before it gets worse.

And yet… USA is trying to kill SMIC, YMTC and other potential competitors off to maintain industrial monopoly and profit for their minion companies so they can continue to capitalize on our wallets and hard earned cash. What beats me is all these citizens continues to cheer on these tactics knowing their bottom lines will get marginalized. Then they protest about all these price hikes as if they don’t understand this very simple logic.

 

[t3t4]

Nope! It costs no more today than yesterday to make the same chip. $50 per TB is my buy number for SSD's, hit that number and we can be friends. Keep artificially jacking the price and I'll make them choke on their overstocked chips. You control of the market folks.

 

[pug_s]

And yet… USA is trying to kill SMIC, YMTC and other potential competitors off to maintain industrial monopoly and profit for their minion companies so they can continue to capitalize on our wallets and hard earned cash. What beats me is all these citizens continues to cheer on these tactics knowing their bottom lines will get marginalized. Then they protest about all these price hikes as if they don’t understand this very simple logic.

I doubt SMIC and YMTC has much to do with the price increase. The memory made by the Chinese companies are mostly for local consumption and they are trying to establish themselves because national security reasons IE Trade bans.

Bigger players Samsung and Hynix are in the export market and they are bigger manipulators of the market. Also, sdram and recently nand prices are mostly dictated not by supply and demand, rather than underproduction and overproduction cycles. In 2023 these same sdram and nand companies lost money because they are selling chips as a loss and now these chip companies are recovering with the price increase.

 

[JTWrenn]

And yet… USA is trying to kill SMIC, YMTC and other potential competitors off to maintain industrial monopoly and profit for their minion companies so they can continue to capitalize on our wallets and hard earned cash. What beats me is all these citizens continues to cheer on these tactics knowing their bottom lines will get marginalized. Then they protest about all these price hikes as if they don’t understand this very simple logic.

In the end China's ip stealing and manipulation are what caused that. If china wasn't so aggressive in the south china seas, and if they were not stealing Ip, using slave labor, and manipulating the market it wouldn't be an issue.

Don't get me wrong, the USA will always look out for themselves, but China is not playing fair when it comes to international law and making their own tech. They have been allowing IP theft for years, and pushing for it.

I do agree that the USA and western countries in general are bad at competition every 100 years we seem to completely break it by giving up on anti trust....but China is even worse on that. So while it would be nice to have other major players, China is at least the driver of these issues not the USA even though everyone deserves crap for bad anti trust laws.

 

[_Shatta_AD_]

In the end China's ip stealing and manipulation are what caused that. If china wasn't so aggressive in the south china seas, and if they were not stealing Ip, using slave labor, and manipulating the market it wouldn't be an issue.

Don't get me wrong, the USA will always look out for themselves, but China is not playing fair when it comes to international law and making their own tech. They have been allowing IP theft for years, and pushing for it.

I do agree that the USA and western countries in general are bad at competition every 100 years we seem to completely break it by giving up on anti trust....but China is even worse on that. So while it would be nice to have other major players, China is at least the driver of these issues not the USA even though everyone deserves crap for bad anti trust laws.

I’m not saying IP theft should be condoned or nurtured but by you logic, if every car companies MUST legitimately re-invent the wheel from scratch, then I’m afraid the competition that you hope for may Never come as the company who owns the patent will always be ahead. The only way there’s competition is if multiple companies catches up and must innovate in order to stay in the game. China is just arriving at that innovation junctions where it MUST go from copying to innovating and right then someone tries to remove her from the competition. Well maybe it’s a good thing, as it’ll force China to innovate earlier but as consumers, we’re quite unlucky to be caught in this era

 

[_Shatta_AD_]

I doubt SMIC and YMTC has much to do with the price increase. The memory made by the Chinese companies are mostly for local consumption and they are trying to establish themselves because national security reasons IE Trade bans.

Bigger players Samsung and Hynix are in the export market and they are bigger manipulators of the market. Also, sdram and recently nand prices are mostly dictated not by supply and demand, rather than underproduction and overproduction cycles. In 2023 these same sdram and nand companies lost money because they are selling chips as a loss and now these chip companies are recovering with the price increase.

YMTC actually was about to go global with their 3D NAND and in-house controller until US stop them from purchasing more fab equipment to increase output. They have no choice but to scale back production to meet only domestic demand for the time being. Had they gone global, other players would be less inclined to cut back NAND production or not cut back as drastically. Even if they did, YMTC would not, and that would at least stabilize supply hence cost to some extent.

 

[JTWrenn]

I’m not saying IP theft should be condoned or nurtured but by you logic, if every car companies MUST legitimately re-invent the wheel from scratch, then I’m afraid the competition that you hope for may Never come as the company who owns the patent will always be ahead. The only way there’s competition is if multiple companies catches up and must innovate in order to stay in the game. China is just arriving at that innovation junctions where it MUST go from copying to innovating and right then someone tries to remove her from the competition. Well maybe it’s a good thing, as it’ll force China to innovate earlier but as consumers, we’re quite unlucky to be caught in this era

I'm sorry that is jut not what IP means. No we shouldn't hold them accountable for making EVs because someone else made them first, but if they stole the software/hardware schematics and then used them to get a leg up the whole product is tainted.

It's not that they are copying, it's that they are stealing the inner workings and information directly. Seeing a car, and looking at it and poking around in it them immitating it with your own style is fine....but if you steal all the work done in the background, all the schematics, all the troubleshooting, and you match it identically, or so close then just paint it different...it's theft. The definitions are clear.

The real issue with competition is both IP theft being a false illegal competition, and anti trust laws failing to allow small corps to come up while the big guys are trying to stomp on them. It has failed because the big guys are way way too big and can stomp them so effectively. China should have to build up their internal knowledge of these things, or pay for the products. Not steal the knowledge and create knockoffs, or their own products based on things that are patented.