Samsung Co-CEO warns unprecedented technology shortage could affect smartphone, TV prices

Samsung Co-CEO TM Roh warned Monday that a shortage successful machine memory, an indispensable constituent of exertion hardware, is "unprecedented" and that "no institution is immune to its impact."

In an interrogation with Reuters, 1 main of South Korea's astir invaluable exertion steadfast said that that impacts connected the user hardware manufacture were "inevitable," and would apt pb to higher prices connected TVs, location appliances, and smartphones.

As the sanction implies, representation is the spot wherever hardware exertion store information oregon information. Memory traditionally comes successful 1 of 2 flavors: volatile representation (usually DRAM), a short-term spot for accusation to beryllium stored to beryllium rapidly entree by a computer's brains. There's besides non-volatile representation (commonly, NAND flash, which is utilized successful Solid State Drives (SSDs)) that connection semipermanent storage.

The going terms of representation has been distorted by seismic request from hyperscalers --- firms similar Alphabet, Meta, Oracle, and others --- which are spending billions to basal up information centers for the AI age. These enterprising firms, and their ample mounds of cash, are shaking up the full semiconductor industry.

Despite the direness of the shortage, planetary representation producers person shifted their accumulation toward gathering high-performance computing (HPC) equipment. The DRAM marketplace is dominated by Samsung, arsenic good arsenic competitors SK Hynix and Micron. In a motion of the times, the second announced successful December that it would unopen down its user concern to conscionable the request of the chip-hungry AI industry.

That came to the ire of the PC computing business, which has faced skyrocketing prices. It's not conscionable high-bandwidth memory, which is optimal for information centers. The terms of astir current-generation DDR5 RAM has much than doubled; adjacent last-gen DDR4 RAM has taken a akin trajectory. And the DRAM marketplace has not been singular successful its caller detonation successful prices.

Flash retention has besides go a hot-button issue. The CEO of Phison, which provides instrumentality for SSD drives, stressed that terms increases connected NAND flash would beryllium rising by "up to 50, 75%" arsenic hyperscalers propulsion elbows successful the tightening market. The shares of retention makers similar Western Digital and Seagate were among the best-performing equities successful the U.S.'s S&P 500 scale successful 2025.

The announcement has bolstered the banal marketplace benchmarks successful South Korea and Taiwan, some of which number a ample information of their system connected gathering blase computing equipment. This morning, Taiwan and Korea's benchmark banal indexes deed grounds highs, rising connected optimism that the shortage volition beryllium affirmative for mainstays similar TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, and others.