Limited options for enterprise buyers
As supply tightens, most enterprises face limited leverage in selecting suppliers.
“Enterprise will have less control over what memory supplier they can choose unless you are a hyperscaler or tier-2 AI datacenter scale enterprise,” Neil Shah, VP for research and partner at Counterpoint Research, told NetworkWorld. “For most enterprises investing in AI infrastructure, they will rely on vendors such as Dell, Lenovo, HPE, Supermicro, and others on their judgment to select the best memory supplier.”
Shah advised enterprises with control over their bill of materials to negotiate and lock in supply and costs in advance. “In most cases for long-tail enterprises, smaller buyers without volume leverage, they will have little control as demand outstrips supply, so the prudent thing would be to spread out the rollout over time to average out the cost spikes,” he said.
Legacy shortage opens door for Chinese suppliers
The current pricing pressure has its roots in production decisions made months ago. According to Counterpoint, the supply crunch originated at the low end of the market as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron redirected production toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, which commands higher margins but consumes three times the wafer capacity of standard DRAM.
That shift created an unusual price inversion: DDR4 used in budget devices now trades at approximately $2.10 per gigabit, while server-grade DDR5 sells for around $1.50 per gigabit, according to the firm.
This tightness is creating an opportunity for China’s CXMT, noted Shah. “DDR4 is being used in low- to mid-tier smart devices and considering bigger vendors such as Samsung and SK Hynix planned to ramp down DDR4 capacity, CXMT could gain advantage and balance the supply versus demand dynamics moving into the second half of next year,” Shah said.
