There has been many a grim report on the ongoing memory shortage crisis, but perhaps most meaningful of all is the forecast that it will last until 2030. Building on that was another that noted that, even by 2027, only 60% of demand will be met despite increased production. A new add-on to this is that, because of the above, memory prices are expected to continue rising until 2028 rolls around.
This comes via Jefferies Equity Research, with a summary of the report being provided by an X account going by @pequityresearch. Going into slightly further detail, memory prices are expected to rise as sharply as 50% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) in Q3 of 2026, with another hike of up to 40% QoQ in Q4 of the year. Things continue to be grim in 2027 with year-on-year increase in prices expected to be up to 45%. But from a different perspective, the 60% of demand being met is the silver lining, slowing down the price hikes.
Per the report, around 50% of memory supply is being tied up with long-term deals with AI companies and cloud service providers. That number could rise to as much as 70%, as more companies sign long-term deals to secure their supply. As of now, the report also notes that Chinese memory makers are still behind in terms of tech. And as such, they won’t be meaningfully contributing to the global memory supply until 2028, when they are expected to catch up.
At current, the memory shortage crisis has already resulted in increases in hardware that make use of them. This ranges from already launched videogames consoles to even new hardware like the Steam Machine. From this report it looks like we’ll have to brace for more of that up until 2028 rolls around.
(Source: @pequityresearch / X)
