Loxus
Member
I've been saying this for awhile. These DRAM manufacturers are trying to cash out on the AI demand due to the fact that they can over charge the AI hyperscalers wyh HBM. And what's funny is HBM was first created for consumer GPUs.It's both. In the end it's about the margin. GPUs had a ridiculous margin priced in from the get go which caught a lot of the bullshit so far but the RAM crisis was just one hit too many.
If you are limited by parts or production capabilities you choose the most profitable path which is AI hardware.
And of course this doesn't change the fact that the ridiculous price increases for RAM and parts in general hit everyone, including Sony which has to compete with the likes of Nvidia for parts and production capacity now. With the current prices and price trajectories and the leaked specs 700 bucks wouldn't be doable without heavy subsidies and there's no reason for that when you have no competition.
Even some journalists are beginning see figure it out.
AI memory crunch forces DRAM market into 'hourly pricing' model, report claims — small and medium-sized businesses fighting for survival
All this raises a question about what happens next if enough SMEs exit the market because they can't afford the premiums. If smaller buyers collectively pull back, tight capacity could soon become oversupply, potentially exposing the shortage as "illusory," says DigiTimes.
And I don't understand why you believe Sony can't secure RAM when they are currently doing it with the PS5. They are surely in the 100 top-tier buyers.
The report describes a market now split between roughly 100 top-tier buyers with the leverage to secure supply and more than 190,000 small and mid-size enterprises fighting over what remains.
The report says that cloud service providers, leading automakers, and smartphone giants Apple and Samsung hold enough financial clout to resist price hikes and maintain priority allocation from memory manufacturers. Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron cannot afford to jeopardize those relationships, so these large customers get served first, while also increasingly requiring prepayment or cash transactions before confirming orders — terms that smaller firms with little bargaining power will struggle with.