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- The ex-chief of Samsung's semiconductor business has made a more optimistic prediction about the RAM crisis
- The memory situation will improve thanks to a surge in RAM production from Chinese companies, and some deflation in the AI bubble
- Due to those factors combined, we're told, "There is a possibility that the market will change starting from the second half of next year or the first half of 2028."
Could the RAM crisis be over sooner than you thought — and maybe even in not much more than a year? An ex-Samsung exec has stated that this could be a possibility.
Wccftech flagged a report from Seoul Economic Daily (via PC Gamer), which quoted Kye-hyun Kyung, who was head of Samsung's semiconductor business until a couple of years ago.
In a keynote at the National Academy of Engineering of Korea in Seoul, Kyung observed that "Chinese companies are aggressively expanding their production capacity" for making RAM.
He then added: "There is a possibility that the market will change starting from the second half of next year or the first half of 2028, when memory supply surges." (Bear in mind that this is translated from Korean).
The ex-Samsung boss further noted that there was also a chance that the "return on investment for Big Tech" could decrease relative to the capital ploughed into AI, and that this could lead to a weakening of the AI boom. This, combined with the mentioned surge in RAM production in China, could mean a swifter than expected correction in the balance of supply and demand.
Or at least swifter than the predictions up until now, in which no one has stuck their neck out to forecast that the RAM crisis could be over before 2028.
Analysis: some welcome optimism — but it goes against the grain
Granted, Kyung has only indicated that we may see the beginning of the end (as it were) of sky-high RAM pricing when the second half of 2027 comes around, but that's still a more optimistic line of thinking than we've seen before. And I'll take that sentiment, certainly.
I'm not convinced that the currently booming AI industry is going to start to turn into a nosedive anytime soon, mind, but the observation about the amount of money being slung at AI heavily outweighing any profits that are made is a fair point.
Other feedback we've had this month on the RAM crisis has been distinctly gloomier. Indeed, we've witnessed warnings of one kind or another from all three big memory chip makers — including Samsung — which are predicting the crisis will last until at least 2028, and in one case, possibly until 2030. And they should be in a pretty good position to know.
So for now, talk of a recovery sparking off in just over a year feels like gazing through rather rosy-tinted spectacles, but I'm happy to entertain the thought — and to hope that other more positive forecasts may be imminent.
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