The current situation in which hyperscalers have made all the hardware manufacturers produce almost exclusively for them is leading us to a curious scenario. Apart from the huge RAM and SSD crisis that affects everything –and everyone– Changing from one technology to a newer one no longer depends so much on the needs of a company but on what is barely available on the market. AND The Elec points to a movement by Samsung that represents a new thrust for mobile phones, computers and everything that has soldered RAM.
No more LPDDR4 modules.
LPDDR4 LPDDR5. They stand for Low-Power Double Data Rate, the low-power version of the RAM tablets that we can buy when building a PC, for example. Unlike conventional RAM pickups, LPDDR memory is soldered to the boardachieving very high speeds with a minuscule energy cost. That is why it is the preferred one for smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks, but it is also ideal for some miniPCs that have become popular in recent months.
The downside is that it cannot be expanded or replaced, but its features make it the only option for certain devices. The most powerful versions mount LPDDR5 and LPDDR5Xbut there are still many devices that have the fourth generation versions for cost savings reasons. The turn comes when, according to the South Korean media The Elec, Samsung has begun to cut off the supply of LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X modules to its customers.
Translation. Although they are memories with a decade behind them, mid-range and entry-level mobile phones, as well as many other devices, continue to have these versions to keep prices low. At a time when the market is more volatile than evermaintaining those competitive prices by mounting memories that are still interesting in certain ranges was a strategy that made a lot of sense.
However, as the media points out, Samsung seems to want to focus on the production of LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X memories. By converting the output lines of the LPDDR4 memories, they will be able to manufacture more new generation RAM, but the price to pay will be that mobile manufacturers will have to switch to that LPDDR5. Mid-range and entry-level smartphones will be faster, but also more expensive.
The price to pay. A few weeks ago we already said that the impact was evident. memory represented 20% of the bill of manufacturing an entry-level mobile phone, being one of the most expensive components. And, at that time, the figure was expected to reach 40% by the middle of this year. With this reconversion of Samsung’s lines, we will see where the percentage increase is in a year in which it is already estimating a drop of more than 10% in mobile shipments.
The calculations They are tremendous:
- In the entry range – increments of 30 dollars per unit.
- In the middle range – from 60 to 80 dollars per unit.
- In the premium – from 100 and 150 dollars per unit.
Samsung itself is not spared. Here you can think that Samsung has a lever to eat the mobile market. That is to say, if it is one of the three that controls the memory production segment and, in addition, has its line of mobile phones and tablets, it can give preferential treatment to its ‘brothers’ to maintain the price in the midst of the crisis. Well no.
They already commented that this was not going to happen and, furthermore, it is already flirting with the idea thats Galaxy A17 be an example of this movement. The company’s entry-level mobile has the Exynos 1330 SoC that supports both LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 memories. When the supply of LPDDR4X runs out, they will move to the new generation, which will mean that there will be two different A17s, one of them being one with 50% faster memory than the other.
They go direct with HBM. But, as two pieces of news are better understood together, at the same time that the abandonment of the LPDDR4 production lines is pointed out, we have confirmation that Samsung is going to press ahead with the development of HBM memories.
These are high-bandwidth memories that are packaged in AI training and inference platforms, and have been reported that Samsung has managed to reduce the HBM memory development cycle from two years to one. It’s a necessary boost to continue being both NVIDIA and AMD’s preferred choice for AI hyperscalers.
Shortage. Putting all this together, the result is that there is a RAM crisis for a while. The bottleneck of the industry is enormous and that only three companies –SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung– are the ones who call the shots, and all have opted to satisfy the demands of AI, does not help the situation return to normal. Although there is Chinese companies that may have their opportunity In this scenario, the reality is that the estimate is that all the production of the large It will barely cover 60% of the memory demand until 2027.
These companies, of course, are doing great. An example is that, in three months of 2026, Samsung earned more than in all of 2025. But for users and the consumer industry itself, the reality is different. And the worst thing is that there is no realistic date when we will start to see a recovery. NVIDIA has taken the lead, AMD tooand it is no longer just the US and China that need memory: Europe also wants its share of the pie.
There are voices that They aim for 2028 as the year of recoverybut other forecasts they go above 2030. What is clear is that there is a crisis ahead
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