Monday, January 12, 2026

Chips: "While you pay through the nose for memory, Samsung expects to triple its profits in Q4"

From The Register, January 8:

Memory pricing expected to surge another 60% in Q1 with relief years away 

While end customers grapple with crushing memory prices, we imagine Samsung execs are breaking out the Champagne. This week the memory titan forecast fourth-quarter operating profit would roughly triple as the South Korean electronics cabal rides the AI wave into the New Year.

In a financial disclosure published Thursday, Samsung predicted Q4 operating profits would come in at $13.77 billion (20 trillion won), up from $4.4 billion (6.49 trillion won) a year ago. Meanwhile, Samsung expects revenues to grow by approximately 23 percent year over year to $64 billion (93 trillion won).

Samsung is one of the leading producers of NAND flash and DRAM memory, prices for which have exploded over the past few months as inventory levels have been strained by intense demand for AI accelerators and servers.

Memory prices are expected to continue climbing sharply over the next few quarters. This is bad news for consumers but great news for memory vendors like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron's bottom lines.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Samsung and SK Hynix could hike prices by as much as 70 percent in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Combined with a 50 percent price hike in the latter half of 2025, that means buyers can expect to pay more than twice what they did for the same memory a year ago.....

....MUCH MORE 

On the consumer side iPhones and laptops need those memory chips which is why we exited one of last week's memory posts with:

"AI data centers are swallowing the world's memory and storage supply, setting the stage for a pricing apocalypse that could last a decade"
With the Consumer Electronics Show kicking off in Las Vegas this might be of interest.  

That was followed by:

It's a real problem. 

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