According to DIGITIMES, as DRAM prices are falling due to weak demand, the three major DRAM manufacturers—Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron—intend to concentrate production resources on DDR5 and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), leading to plans to discontinue DDR3 and DDR4 production within 2025. Once these products are discontinued, the market expects other DRAM manufacturers to benefit from transferred orders, potentially reversing the DRAM market's oversupply situation as early as this summer, leading to a supply shortage.
DRAM prices have fallen for five consecutive months. In January 2025, the wholesale price (bulk transaction price) of the benchmark product DDR4 8Gb was around $1.75 per unit, while the smaller capacity 4Gb product was priced at around $1.34 per unit, both down 6% from the previous month, marking the fifth consecutive month of decline. The 8Gb product recorded its largest drop in 1 year and 10 months (since March 2023), while the 4Gb product saw its largest drop in 1 year and 9 months (since April 2023).
According to Omdia's forecast, DRAM price declines will continue through the second half of 2025, with both DDR4 and DDR5 product prices expected to fall. Prices for PC, server, and mobile DRAM are expected to continue dropping until the third quarter of 2025, falling by nearly 10% in the first half of 2025 and by about 5% in the second half. Against this backdrop, leading DRAM manufacturers are likely to reduce DRAM production.
In fact, since 2024, the global memory market has entered a technology replacement cycle, with major storage manufacturers gradually shifting their production focus to DDR5 and HBM (High Bandwidth Memory).
Samsung discontinued DDR3 production in the second quarter of 2024 and has continued to reduce DDR4 capacity, shifting toward high-end products such as DDR5 and LPDDR5. SK Hynix stopped supplying DDR3 at the end of 2023 and reduced DDR4 production to 30% in the third quarter of 2024, further decreasing it to 20% in the fourth quarter.
If the three major manufacturers—Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron—stop producing DDR4, the supply of DDR4 will significantly decrease, and the existing inventory of DDR4 products in the market will gradually be consumed, potentially leading to shortages after summer and driving prices back up.
Notably, as the three major manufacturers abandon DDR3/DDR4, Taiwanese suppliers Nanya Technology and Winbond Electronics may pick up transferred orders.
Nanya Technology expects the market to bottom out in the first half of 2025, with demand recovery potentially becoming evident as early as the second quarter. Meanwhile, Winbond Electronics is actively transitioning from DDR3 to DDR4 products and expects to ship large volumes of DDR4 products in the second half of the year to boost performance.
DDR3 was first introduced in 2007. Compared to previous generation products, DDR3 memory modules achieved significant improvements in transfer rates, greatly accelerating data read and write speeds, effectively meeting the demands of multitasking and large-scale data processing. Currently, DDR3 has become a niche product used in lower-priced, less complex embedded applications, including Wi-Fi routers and switches.
DDR4 memory starts at a higher clock frequency, with common frequencies beginning at 2133MHz, and some high-end products reaching 4000MHz or higher. The theoretical data transfer bandwidth can reach 34.1GB/s. In practical computer usage scenarios, DDR4 memory's high transfer rate can effectively reduce software startup times. DDR4 memory can reach capacities of 16GB or even 32GB per module. In server and workstation domains, DDR4 memory's high-capacity support allows for the construction of ultra-large-scale memory systems.
