market

We thought that the Chinese RAM manufacturers came to relieve the market. Turns out they’re playing the same game as everyone else.

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When the market is shared by a few, you can’t expect popular prices. The RAM memory segment is dominated by three manufacturers (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung) and, with most of its production focused on the AI ​​market, the consumer segment is in deep water. In a scenario in which there are simply no chips, the Chinese RAM memory companies seemed like a ball of oxygen. The reality seems somewhat different. Hunting in China. Giants like Asus, Lenovo or Apple have been around for some time knocking on the doors of Chinese companies of RAM memory. Although traditionally it was the two South Korean companies (Samsung and SK Hynix) and the American Micron that supplied RAM to both manufacturers and assemblers, with the current component crisis those companies have been left orphaned and have had to look to the Chinese market. CXMT and YMTC (which is the counterpart of flash memory) are the two proper names of Chinese RAM and in recent years they have been making advances to catch up with consumer chips. There are those who believe that they are not suitable for high-end products, but when the need arises, expectations relax. That is why both have consolidated as a juicy element to alleviate the marketbut it turns out that they did not come to solve the global crisis, but to play the same game as the big ones. Bargaining power. As demand increased, both YMTC and CXMT have started selling their products at premium prices. It is that market that regulates itself, one in which everyone is in the same boat and, if they can sell their products at a higher price, they see no need to do so at a lower one (especially when we are seeing stratospheric financial results in this situation). But the most curious thing is that they are selling the most expensive things… to their own business partners. According to ReutersCXMT has been raising Huawei’s RAM prices for months. Huawei is competing against Nvidia both in the local and global markets, showing its equipment specially designed for a period in which AI inference seems like the next step of this technology, and as pointed out in Reuters, when Huawei asked for a relief in prices, CXMT did not give in. In fact, they point out that a power struggle is taking place with negative consequences for Huawei, since CXMT has been ordering its engineers to leave clean rooms in which they collaborated with partners of the Chinese giant, such as SiCarrier. In fact, it has also been recently commented that Huawei has begun to move to create your own DRAM factory. The one who warns… It is an interesting twist when it was assumed that Chinese manufacturers would arrive to alleviate the situation, competing with aggressive discounts below the prices of the three that control the market thanks to a growth produced, in part, through government subsidies. By competing with prices below those of the market they would be able to get a juicy piece of the pie among consumer brands, but as we have repeatedly said when we talked about itIn the end what rules is… money. Whenever it has been reported that someone opened a new plant or that a new research movement was being carried out in NAND chips, we already commented that the product would not be intended to alleviate the situation worldwide in the consumer segment, but for what is most profitable for the manufacturers of these chips: the AI ​​segment. Seeing the record profits of companies like SK Hynix or Samsung, it was naive to think that a company would enter this sector to alleviate the burden of consumer products. USA with the magnifying glass. Thus, CXMT has become the fourth largest manufacturer of memory worldwide, including the memory that goes into mobile phones and servers for AI, which is giving it brutal bargaining power, enough to put the brakes on a Huawei that has full government trust to become one of the technological engines of the country. However, there is a conflict of interest because Huawei is interested in its hardwarebut where China is also competing globally is in AI, and CXMT has just signed two very juicy agreements in this area. one with ByteDance for more than 7 billion dollars and another with Tencent for more than 3 billion dollars. Both to supply DRAM chips for data center servers for artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the United States is seeing a new problem being born, as both CXMT and YMTC have started to get your attention. YMTC is listed in the ‘EntityList‘ American and Micron is seeing its business in jeopardy, urging Congress to impose stricter controls on CXMT. Interestingly, Apple is advocating the opposite as it desperately needs RAM and CXMT seems like the ideal candidate. Prepared for the worst. In any case, and as we have said on several occasions, any movement in this direction by the RAM majors will be aimed at producing more chips for hyperscalers. It’s a gigantic market right now that doesn’t seem to have an end or relief in sight. Samsung has achieved a quarter even better than Nvidia and since SK Hynix has issued a clear warning“Next year will be the worst in the history of the semiconductor industry.” Translation: buy now what you think you will need because there is nothing to indicate that the situation will relax in the short term. And when it happens, there are already manufacturers like Lenovo who point out that prices they will never return to the pre-crisis situation… In Xataka | There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk

Tesla plummets on the stock market, but the fault is not with the cars, but with the robots

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Tesla shares They have sunk this Thursday between 12% and 14%being one of its biggest collapses in recent years. The fall came after the publication of the second quarter results, worsening even more during the conference with investors, in which Elon Musk recognized that manufacturing their humanoid robots Optimus on a large scale it will be much more complicated than he had promised until now. According to data collected by different specialized media, the fall has erased more than $140 billion in market capitalization in a single day. What Wall Street didn’t like. Tesla has invoiced $28.24 billion this quarter, 26% more than a year before, and delivered a total of 480,126 vehicles, which are also record figures. However, operating profit has plummeted 57% to $398 million, and operating margin has fallen from 4.1% to 1.4%. On the other hand, adjusted earnings per share remained at 33 cents, well below the close to 51-53 cents that Wall Street analysts expected. Along with this, free cash flow was positioned in negative for the first time in more than two years, with a balance of around -1.1 billion dollars, while investment spending (capex) shot up 142%, to almost 5.8 billion, within an annual spending plan of 25 billion dollars, according to they detailed from The Next Web. Worry. More than the numbers, what sank the value even further during the call with investors itself was Musk’s tone when talking about Optimus. And the top person in charge of the company admitted openly that it is the most difficult manufacturing challenge the company has faced. “It’s going to be the most difficult product to scale into production that we’ve ever made at Tesla, because everything about the robot is new,” Musk said during the earnings call. The truth is that it was a rather strange conference, since he also stated that he was “sick.” ANDn problemyes. Musk himself listed several technical obstacles, including the wear and tear of parts, the difficulty of achieving dexterity similar to that of a human hand (which he described as “something incredible” that no robotics company has yet managed to replicate) and the risk of breakdowns. Also stressed that, unlike cars, for which Tesla already has a consolidated supply chain, Optimus has no previous supply chain and is made up of about 10,000 unique parts, many of them manufactured from scratch. In fact, Tesla removed from its second quarter earnings presentation references to Optimus mass production that it had included in its first quarter earnings report, according to they pointed from The Next Web. script twist. Musk’s tone has changed from previous results. Last year he claimed that he would be “surprised” if Tesla was not producing 100,000 Optimus units per month within five years, and in January 2025 he even projected between 50,000 and 100,000 robots by 2026, according to they remembered from the middle. However, in January of this year he had already recognized that no Optimus was still performing useful tasks in Tesla factories. And the more than a thousand Generation 3 robots deployed in Fremont and the Texas Gigafactory were dedicated solely to collecting training data. Musk also took advantage of the call to defend Optimus against rivals such as Figure or Boston Dynamics, insisting that demonstrations of other humanoid robots circulating on the Internet are “pre-programmed or teleoperated,” and that Optimus will be the first capable of performing general tasks autonomously. Robotaxis. Musk also had things to say about the launch of your robotaxis service, pointing that the vehicles have already exceeded 380,000 kilometers without supervision in six cities and “without notable incidents.” But, as they point Since Electrek, it is Tesla itself that decides what counts as “remarkable”, and that same number of kilometers is traveled by Waymo, its main competitor, in just one day. On the other hand, the company’s internal data shows that the growth of the service is stagnant. And the paid kilometers have remained flat, around 900,000, and the active fleet without supervision has been reduced to only 21 vehicles. Technological setback. It hasn’t been a good week for big tech this week. On the same Thursday, the Nasdaq fell more than 2% and the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones lost more than 1%, also dragged down by the results of Alphabet, which dropped 6.5% in the stock market after announcing a strong increase in spending and its first “burn” of cash. Together, the “magnificent seven” of the stock market lost $767 billion in value in a single day, according to Bloomberg. The VIX volatility index, Wall Street’s so-called “fear gauge,” rose to its highest level in almost a month. And now what. During the same call, investors asked Musk about the highly rumored merger between SpaceX and Tesla. The businessman did not rule it out, although he did not give many details either. “We cannot talk about merging companies at an earnings conference,” he said, adding that such a move “has to be done with the appropriate process.” The future of Optimus is also not a minor matter for Musk himself, as part of his compensation package as CEO is conditioned to the delivery of one million Optimus robots within a period of ten years, and things are not starting at the moment. For the moment, Tesla has converted part of its assembly lines in Fremont to manufacture Optimus and is building a specific plant next to the Texas Gigafactory, but it no longer dares to set a date for the start of volume production. Cover image | Flickr (Ministry of Communications), Unsplash (Priscilla Du Preez) In Xataka | Google has plenty of chips to sell. He prefers to keep them so as not to be left behind in the AGI race.

only Chinese memory manufacturers can bring sanity back to the hardware market

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The price of memory has become a bad joke. DDR4 and DDR5 modules are in short supply, PC manufacturers are packaging computers without enough memory and even Apple has risen 20% the price of your MacBooks and iPads blaming this component directly. The artificial intelligence (AI) is to blame, and there is no sign of the situation improving anytime soon. Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, which control around 90% of global DRAM production, have refocused much of its manufacturing lines towards high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which powers AI accelerators from Nvidia and other companies. The result is that the consumer market, the one that supplies our computers, mobile phones and consoles, has been practically abandoned to its fate. And in that void there are only two names capable of providing some oxygen: CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) and YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Co.). These two Chinese manufacturers have been secondary players for years and, suddenly, they have emerged as the only variable capable of stabilizing skyrocketing prices. Two manufacturers, one opportunity CXMT has made a rise that seemed unthinkable just two years ago. This company has increased its net profit more than 1,688% in a single quarter, has signed a contract with Tencent valued at about 20 billion yuan (about $2.75 billion) to supply DRAM for servers, and already holds a global share of 7.67% according to Omdiamaking it the fourth largest manufacturer on the planet and the first in China. While CXMT fights its battle in the DRAM market, YMTC does the same in the field of NAND Flash chips. This last company has gone from a share of 8% to 13% in just one year, and is preparing a new plant whose mass production will start during the second half of 2026which will place it as the third largest NAND manufacturer in the world only behind Samsung and Kioxia. In addition, YMTC has decided to dedicate 50% of the capacity of its third plant in the city, different from the previous one, to the manufacturing of DRAM, marking an unprecedented foray into the field of its compatriot CXMT. CXMT prices are already starting to look dangerously similar to those of Samsung, SK hynix or Micron However, it is in our best interest to moderate our enthusiasm. As we could see at Computex, CXMT prices They are already beginning to look dangerously similar to those of Samsung, SK hynix or Micron, and a good part of their production is still destined for the Chinese domestic market. It is important that we also moderate our expectations: the avalanche of capacity of these two manufacturers will not reach the global market until 2027, according to the industry’s own estimates. And there is another front that does not depend on the factories. CXMT is on the Pentagon’s 1260H list for its alleged ties to the People’s Liberation Army, something that has forced Apple to put pressure on the Trump Administration to be able to buy chips from him without retaliation. As can be expected, any movement in Washington can stop this escape route in its tracks just when we need it most. China is not going to solve this crisis overnight, but it is, today, the only piece on the board that is moving in the right direction. Whether it arrives on time or not will depend on both its factories and the geopolitics that surround them. In Xataka | China needs to develop a new type of chips immune to US sanctions. And your scientists have just achieved it

China conquered the European cheap tire market. The EU has just put the brakes on it

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The European Commission has approved antidumping tariffs definitive rates on tires for passenger cars and light vans from China, which range between 4.3% and 45.3% depending on the manufacturer. The measure comes after an investigation opened in November last year and adds another blow to the growing trade tension between the EU and Chinawhich already affects multiple sectors, including (and one of the most famous), that of electric cars. What has happened? The European Commission maintains that Chinese tires were entering the community market at artificially low prices, a practice known as dumping, and assures that this has harmed the European industry in the sector, which employs more than 80,000 people in 14 EU countries, according to has explained the institution itself. In detail. Tariffs are not the same for all manufacturers. Shandong Yongsheng Rubber Group, a producer focused on more economical tires, receives the highest tariff45.3%. Another 64 companies (including Chinese factories of brands such as Pirelli, Goodyear, Continental or Sumitomo) will have to pay 24.4%. The most striking case is perhaps that of the South Korean company Hankook, which manufactures in China but has escaped with a tariff of only 4.3%, since its researchers concluded that its tires are sold at much higher prices than those of its Chinese competitors and that their impact on the European market was less. Why does it matter? The European market for tires of this type moved more than 18,000 million euros in 2024, with a consumption of about 330 million units, according to data of the European Commission. Of them, almost 93 million came from China, which represents a market share of 28%, a percentage that has been growing strongly from 18% in 2021, according to collect Carscoops. The Commission itself states that indicators such as sales, employment or profitability of European manufacturers showed “a clear negative trend” during the period analyzed. Between the lines. More than 90% of imported Chinese tires are concentrated in the cheapest segment of the market, the so-called “tier 3”, according to data of the Coalition Against Unfair Tire Imports, the association of European manufacturers that filed the initial complaint. This organization assures that the dumping margins detected ranged between 41% and 104%, and that Chinese prices were below European prices by between 30% and 65%. To calculate whether there was dumping, the Commission needed to compare Chinese prices with reliable “reference” prices. The problem is that, according to Brussels, prices within China do not serve as a reference because the State has too much influence over companies in the sector. Therefore, the Commission has decided to use Turkish prices as a proxy to make that comparison. This decision has not pleased the Chinese producers or the South Korean companies Kumho Tire and Hankook, which they argue that Türkiye is not a valid example either, since it imports steel from Russia. The Commission, however, has rejected this argument and has maintained its choice. What China says. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce before the EU has warned that tariffs could place an additional cost burden on the automotive sector. In a statement Quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper, the organization points out that tariff differences between manufacturers “may have implications for the competitive position of companies operating in the same market”, including European and Asian companies with plants in China. What does it mean for the pocket? According to calculations According to the German media Automobilwoche, tariffs are applied to the import value of the tire, not its final sales price. In 2024, this average value was 30.30 euros per unit. With the 45.3% tariff, the extra cost would be around 13.70 euros; with that of 24.4%, about 7.40 euros. Adding VAT, the increase for the buyer could be between 9 and 16 euros per tire, before the stores apply their own margins. And everything indicates that the entry segment will be the one that will notice the impact the most. And now what. This measure does not close the chapter between the EU and China in this sector. And there is also a parallel investigation for possible illegal subsidies to Chinese manufacturers, also focused on tires, whose conclusions are expected in December of this year. Citi analysts, cited by SCMP, consider that tariffs can help stabilize the European tire sector and anticipate a positive reaction on the stock market for manufacturers such as Goodyear, Michelin, Continental and Pirelli. Cover image | François Genon and Robert Laursoo In Xataka | The camera that watches you while you drive is already mandatory in new cars. And no one guarantees what happens with that data.

The OECD has found a burden in the Spanish labor market: we do not earn enough

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It doesn’t fail. Every time I go shopping at the supermarket I come across someone who complains about the price of fruit, of the eggs or the unattainable that the salmon has set for the little that the salary rises of the humble workers. That buzz now has international support. The report has just been published ‘OECD Employment Outlook 2026’ which analyzes the labor market of the member countries and, among praising the Spanish labor market, has left us with a small barb: low salaries continue to be Spain’s weak point. A report that puts figures to the discomfort. The Paris-based organization analyzes the occupational health of the more than 40 member countries every year. In 2026, the organization recognizes important advances in the Spanish labor market: more employment, less temporalitya stoppage that goes down little by little. But when it comes to the salaries section, the tone changes. According to OECD data, real wages, after inflation, remain 2% below where they were at the beginning of 2021, just before prices soared. That is, in terms of purchasing power, salaries are worse than five years ago. This percentage places Spain among the three countries with the greatest drop in purchasing power since the pandemic, only behind Italy and Australia. Much of Europe has already recovered its purchasing power after the post-pandemic downturn, but Spain continues to lag behind. The minimum wage rises, the rest stagnates. It is worth stopping to analyze salaries in Spain because during the last five years not all salaries have evolved the same. The minimum wage has been going up for years by decree and this 2026 reached the 1,221 euros per month3.1% more than last year. Since 2018 it has grown more than 60%. This salary increase, the only one that is in the hands of the Government, has protected those who earn the least. The problem is what happens above that mandatory minimum that remains in the hands of companies. While the minimum has been advancing, the average salary has barely movedand the distance between the two narrows, causing more and more employees to approach that income floor, so that an employee with several years of experience can charge just a little more than a young man in his first job. Increase in real wages according to the OECD. Spain in the tail group It’s math. The INE data confirm that the labor cost per worker rose 4.9% in the first quarter of 2026. However, if this figure is crossed with an inflation that is around 3%, the real margin of improvement that remains is small, and for a large part of the workforce, the increase in their purchasing power is almost non-existent. “Although real wages grew by 2% during the last year, they are still 2% below their level in the first quarter of 2021, which places Spain among the OECD economies where they have fallen the most since the Pandemic,” the international organization warns, highlighting Spain’s wage stagnation. Why don’t salaries start? The OECD points to an old acquaintance to justify this stagnation: productivity. Spain has hardly improved its productivity figures for a decade and that limits how much a salary can rise without the company losing margin. “Given that labor productivity growth has stagnated over the last decade, and in a context of renewed short-term inflationary pressures, real wages are anticipated not to rebound throughout 2026 and 2027,” the OECD report indicates. The positive side is that, although the situation has stagnated in recent years, Spanish companies have become less reactive to the ups and downs of the economy. The proportion of companies that have laid off their employees despite changes in the economy has increased from 8.9% at the end of 2019 to 4.3% in the first quarter of 2026. The organization attributes this decline to the application of the labor reform in 2022. “The reform has driven greater recourse to permanent contracts: the proportion of workers with temporary contracts fell from 24.8% in the first quarter of 2022 to 14.8% in the first quarter of 2026, although it is still higher than that of most OECD countries,” the report states. Unemployment, the wound that does not close. The other burden that the OECD points out in the Spanish labor market is more than well known, but no less serious. Spain remains the second country with the highest unemployment rate of the entire OECD, more than double the average and only behind Finland. According to the unemployment data of the Ministry of Labor, in May it fell to 10.3%, reaching 2007 levels. It is an improvement, yes, but from a very high starting point. Behind that figure there is also a factor of geographical inequality. The difference between the regions with the most and the least unemployment reaches 15.5 points, well above the OECD average. Looking for work in Melilla is not the same as in the Basque Country, and that gap It is also transferred to the income of each household, according to the report itself. In Xataka | Working does not get you out of poverty: three out of four workers have not improved their purchasing power in two years Image | Unsplash (Ru Dur, Mitchell Luo)

We have turned the absence of demands into the most expensive good on the market. And we call it silence

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Rolls-Royce has an engineering department dedicated exclusively to calibrating how much silence should enter the cabin of a Phantomand what exact type. Not absolute silence, which they found creates nausea and disorientation, but a specific silence: an almost imperceptible residue of engine sound that confirms to the occupant that the power is still there. Only he has decided not to bother him. They call him “engineering silence“and costs almost more than the engine. This gives us a clue as to where the shots are going: silence has never come free. The mansions have walls of one and a half meters, the gardens served as an acoustic barrier and the operas are built so that not even half a creak reaches the neighboring box. The fact that silence is a luxury is not new, it is history, what is new is that it is no longer necessary to buy land to achieve it. Now silence is manufactured. And like any manufactured product, it can be sold, packaged and improved in the next version. Silence has been a side effect of privilege: the rich living away from the noise because they could afford the land and the distance. Now we move to silence as a product designed by sound engineers. The active cancellation headphonesone more simile xatakerothey do not eliminate noise but rather shape it. They generate the reverse wave calculated exactly to cancel out the frequencies of the airplane or the noise in the cafeteria. It is the same logic, but in reverse, that Volkswagen and other manufacturers use when They pump through the speakers a synthetic engine roar so that a stealthy electric car sounds like it has another engine. We make fake noise for those who want to feel powerful and fake silence for those who want to feel safe. In both cases, what you pay for is not the sound or its absence, but the feeling of having control over it. But the silence of a Rolls-Royce and the silence of an unanswered call have something in common that goes beyond sound: they are both, in reality, absence of demand. And control, not silence, is what has become a premium item. The most expensive version of acoustic disconnection is not not hearing the noise on the street, but not even having to respond. The assistant that filters calls, the agenda that decides who deserves your attention and who doesn’t, the possibility of sending someone off with a “my team will contact you” without it sounding like an excuse. This is not sold by Apple, Bose or Sennheiser. It is bought with power. The noise, meanwhile, has stayed exactly where it was: in those who cannot afford to avoid it. The silent carriage of the AVE because the rest is not and no one expects it to be, the neighbor messing around with the drill at odd hours, the bank notifications that you cannot silence in case a danger signal appears at some point, the hum of work WhatsApp groups (another epidemic) who assume that you are available on a Tuesday night, because answering quickly is an obligation for those who do not have the margin not to do so. The silence has been gentrified. Even something else: it has been converted into a subscription. And like any subscription, as soon as you stop paying, the noise returns. In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were. Featured image | Xataka

AI is generating a labor market at two speeds: those who win and those who are left behind

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We have been hearing for years that AI is going to reconfigure the labor market and we have more and more data on how that change is going. PwC has just made public its new barometer global analysis of AI in the labor market in which, after analyzing more than 1 billion job offers in 27 countries, they reach several very interesting conclusions. Two speeds. One of the findings of the study is that AI is helping to create two categories in the labor market. On the one hand there are the so-called “professionalized roles” which are professions that can use AI as support, but require that the human be the one who does the fine work, such as specialist doctors, architects or recruiters. On the other hand, there are “democratized roles” that are positions that AI has facilitated, that is, that a non-expert can do it or that AI can directly do much of the work. This is the case of customer service, first-level technical support or administrative positions. According to the report, professionalized positions are growing much faster than democratized ones, with twice as many positions offered and 42% more salary growth. In Xataka OpenAI assures that AI has not had that much impact on employment. Anthropic believes just the opposite and therein lies the problem Productivity boom. There is a growing gap between companies that know how to make the most of AI and those that don’t. Between 2018 and 2025, productivity growth among companies in sectors less exposed to AI has increased by 24%, while those most exposed reach 34%. Within this group, they have detected that companies that use AI most intensively have managed to boost their productivity by up to 163%, five times more than the average for the rest. In addition to being more productive, these companies are also increasing their workforce, up to 52% compared to 36% for less pro-AI companies. Knowing about AI pays better. The barometer has detected that the pull of AI also affects salaries. The pay gap between those with specific AI skills and those without has increased to 62%, up from 57% last year. In addition, jobs in specific areas such as machine learning or prompt engineering are growing eight times faster than the general labor market (69% compared to 9%). The number of offers for jobs related to AI is already double what was seen in 2024, especially in sectors such as technology, media, telecommunications and professional services. {“videoId”:”x806n3d”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”TECHNOLOGY and THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE – Insert Coin with Manuel Hidalgo”, “tag”:”employment”, “duration”:”1806″} Junior who look senior. Another finding of the study is that entry-level or junior positions now have higher requirements. The offers analyzed tend to require typically senior skills such as judgment, leadership and creativity. Specifically, PwC says that the jobs most exposed to AI are seven times more likely to require these skills in entry-level roles, and that vacancies for these junior-senior positions have grown by 35% since 2019, while the rest of the junior roles have decreased by 10%. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Spain has just put numbers to the impact of AI on the labor market: 2.3 million jobs will change forever (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news AI is generating a labor market at two speeds: those who win and those who are left behind was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

The retail SSD market has all but disappeared. And it is not because users have stopped buying them

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Buying an SSD seemed, until not so long ago, one of those fairly simple decisions in the PC world: choose capacity, look at speeds, compare prices and little else. But the market behind this daily gesture has changed significantly. What we have seen in recent months is not a disappearance of the need for storage, but a much deeper strain on the supply chain. SSDs are still necessary, but an increasing share of drives that could previously end up in the channel retail seems to be finding other destinations before reaching the retail window. what’s happening. The clearest signal was put on the table by Nelson Duann, vice president of Silicon Motion, one of the major manufacturers of SSD controllers. In an interview with Tom’s Hardware during Computex 2026the executive summarized his reading of the market like this: “The retail SSD market has practically disappeared.” He was not talking about a specific drop or a minor adjustment, but rather about what happened during the first half of 2026, a period in which retail sales of SSDs fell significantly. The chain has moved. The key point is who is buying those units now. Duann explained that the controllers sold by silicon motion to module assemblers, that is, companies that integrate memory, controllers and other components to sell complete SSDs, largely end up in units destined for PC manufacturers. It’s not a minor detail: according to that reading, manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Dell or HP can’t get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from the big memory manufacturers, so they are turning to a channel that previously looked much more towards the end user. The pressure of AI. The background appears clearly in TrendForce data. According to the consulting firm, cloud service providers increased demand for enterprise SSDs in the first quarter of 2026 due to the need to build infrastructure for AI servers, with high-speed data transmission and enormous storage capacities. Added to that was another factor: the structural shortage of traditional hard drives pushed a significant portion of orders toward QLC enterprise SSDs. There are figures. TrendForce says the combined revenue of the world’s five largest NAND Flash vendors grew 83.7% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 to exceed $38.9 billion. The increase came in a scenario of strong demand and limited supply, with average sales prices above expectations. The distribution also shows the scale of the phenomenon: Samsung closed the quarter with 13.51 billion dollars, SK hynix Group reached about 7.53 billion and Kioxia reached 5.96 billion. The indirect winnerss. The hit to the retail storefront does not mean that the entire chain is losing at the same rate. Duann added that, in the past, most of these companies were focused on selling to the end user, but since the end of last year and through 2026 that dynamic has changed. Demand from PC manufacturers has strengthened and those suppliers are directing a significant portion of their production directly to them. For companies like Silicon Motion, which sell SSD controllers to these assemblers, the market continues to move, although it does so through another door. What the buyer notices. This industrial readjustment ends up reaching the user in a fairly direct way. As we have seen, the prices of consumer SSDs have increased significantly in recent quarters due to the priority that memory manufacturers are giving to the AI ​​sector. That is to say, the pressure does not stay in the data centers, it also filters down to the shop window and the computer that we end up buying. everything remains the same. TrendForce indicates that large NAND Flash suppliers will add virtually no new capacity during the year and that, due to AI-related demand, supply shortages will remain. Production will also continue to be heavily focused on server storage applications, with high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs gaining penetration. In this context, the retail market is conditioned by an industrial priority that does not aim to change immediately. In summary. The retail SSD market has weakened not because the user no longer needs fast storage, but because the industry has changed its order of priorities. Available NAND is being disputed between data centers, large buyers in the PC industry and companies trying to respond to increasingly server-oriented demand. What once came more naturally to the showcase is now more likely to end up integrated into a new team or AI infrastructure. The SSD is still there, but the usual buyer is no longer first in line. Images | Western Digital + Photoshop In Xataka | SSD prices are so crazy that a 2TB drive for the PS5 costs more than the PS5 itself

Second-hand homes were one of the last refuges on the market. Now they are becoming a luxury

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When the real estate market gets tight, prices skyrocket and the imbalance between supply and demand worsens, one thing happens: buyers lose the few refuges they had left. In Madrid for example the ‘plan B’ Looking for a house on the outskirts, in towns like Alcobendas, Móstoles or Getafe, is becoming less and less ‘plan B’ due to the rising cost of m2 throughout the community. Another refuge that offers less and less consolation is the second-hand market, where prices are already rising faster than in the newly built housing segment. In fact, used homes are getting more expensive. faster than what happened in 2007, before the bubble burst. What has happened? That the ‘used’ housing market is increasingly tense. It is something that anyone looking for a home has probably experienced firsthand, but it is much better understood when consulting the latest statistics of the INE. They show how in a bullish scenario, marked by the general rise of prices, second-hand housing is becoming more expensive at a faster rate than brand new properties. Annual IPV rate. Total housing, new and second-hand. Percentage. What does that mean? As a good graph says more than a long explanation, the phenomenon is better understood with the infographic above, work of the INE itself. In it we basically see the evolution throughout the last months of the House Price Index (IPV), an indicator that tells us about variations in the cost of houses. If we talk about the general residential market, the IPV grew by 12.9% during the first quarter of 2026, but things change when we take out the magnifying glass and look at the differences between new and used homes. In the first case, that of brand new homes, prices at the start of the year increased by 9.1% compared to the same period in 2025. If we talk about second-hand properties, that percentage is however much higher: 13.5%. Does that mean used apartments are more expensive than new ones? No. It shows us that its market is overheating at a faster rate. And that in turn gives us a clue about where the market is tense. Can the focus be expanded? Yes. The increase in the price of the second-hand market is also clearer when we compare quarters instead of years or if we take a map of Spain and look at the different communities. In fact, there is only one where the price of new homes has risen faster than that of used homes during the first quarter of the year: the Canary Islands. In the country’s other archipelago, the Balearic Islands, the ‘photo’ is diametrically opposite. There the price of new homes rose by 2.5%, used homes by 15%. Territory Second-hand IPV 1st Q 2007 (%) Second-hand IPV 1st Q 2026 (%) National 13.0 13.5 Andalusia 15.4 13.6 Aragon 9.9 16.4 Asturias 16.4 14.8 Balearics 13.9 15.0 Canary Islands 14.2 10.6 Cantabria 12.6 14.5 Castile and León 11.6 15.8 Castile-La Mancha 15.7 11.6 Catalonia 11.6 10.8 Valencian Community 15.1 14.9 Estremadura 13.4 12.4 Galicia 13.2 14.1 Community of Madrid 11.5 14.7 Murcia Region 15.1 16.3 Navarre 11.2 12.8 the Basque Country 12.7 11.4 Rioja 9.9 15.3 What was happening in 2007? When we talk about the residential market and price increases, it is inevitable to think about 2007 because at that time Spain was immersed in an upward spiral that led to the bursting of the bubble. one year later. At that time (first quarter of 2007) the general IPV was slightly higher than now (13.1% compared to the 12.9% with which 2026 started), but new and used housing became more expensive at almost the same speed. Not today. What’s more, used properties are appreciating faster than 19 years ago. It is an important observation because it reflects the reality they live almost a dozen of communities in Spain, in which used properties are becoming more expensive today than in the run-up to the brick 2008. It occurs in the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Galicia, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra and La Rioja, although the clearest case is Aragon. There the IPV of used homes was 9.9% at the beginning of 2007. Now that indicator has shot up to 16.4%. Are there more sources? Yes. The Ministry of Housing provides another study on the subject that is interesting. Every so often the department headed by Isabel Rodríguez publishes a report on appraisals and, although it does not differentiate between new and second-hand houses, it does differ due to their age: it distinguishes between those on the free market that are less than five years old and those that are older than that age, so it is likely that they have had several owners. This classification gives a very similar reading. During the first quarter of 2026, the appraised value of homes less than five years old (completed in 2021 at the latest) stood at €2,685.2 per m2, 12.8% more than during the same period in 2025. Older homes were appraised at €2,303.8/m2, but their rate of increase was also higher, around 13.8%. What are the causes? To understand the data from the INE or the Ministry of Housing, several keys must be taken into account. One, fundamental one, is the shortage of new construction, which remains at levels much lower than those managed by the sector at the beginning of the 2000s. In 2025 the housing stock barely added 94,800 properties more and, although in the last months of the year they began another 34,200 (free housing), the truth is that Spain continues creating new homes much more speed of what raises new buildings. The result: a deficit that the Bank of Spain estimates at 750,000 houses. For reference, of the 700,000 operations closed last year, eight out of ten (78.1%) featured second-hand properties. Meanwhile, the stock of new houses fell by about 6%. “Second-hand housing continues to gain value steadily, reflecting that demand continues to look for opportunities in any type due to the shortage … Read more

The Spanish telecom market was quiet. Until Bertín Osborne arrived

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Spain already has your most patriotic telephone operator. It is called Española de Telefonía, its logo fuses the WiFi symbol with the horns of a bull and the colors of the flag, its slogan is “Things done well, things right” and its creator is none other than Bertín Osborne. And this is just the beginning. “Proudly Spanish and with the best coverage.” With this phrase (and with many Spanish flags) he welcomes us the Spanish Telephony websitethe new virtual operator that operates under the coverage of Movistar and boasts of being 100% Spanish. The most traditional teleco In case it was not clear, in the Who we are section, Española de Telefonía reminds us that they are “a Spanish company that pays its taxes in Spain, creates local employment and contributes to the development of our national economy. Every euro invested in our services remains in Spain.” They also presume that Your call center is located in Spain and is attended by “qualified Spanish staff” who “understand and share our values.” Of course, 24-hour attention is handled by an AI that we hope is also Spanish. They also promise a “clean and tidy installation” by their own technicians. On his Instagram account, Bertín Osborne has been promoting this new project and assures that it is founded by five businessmen “Antonio, Paco, Ernesto, Fran and Bertín, came together to offer a premium telephony service, for people who love their country, that is, Spain.” Mobile and fiber rates for patriots As it could not be otherwise, the rates all have the names of illustrious figures of our country such as Colón, Bécquer, Murillo and of course the Spain rate, which is its strongest bet. One detail to keep in mind is that the Colón and Bécquer rates say that the data is unlimited, but there is a limit of 120GB. SPAIN COLON BECQUER MURILLO calls Unlimited national Unlimited national and EU Unlimited national and EU Unlimited national and EU data 15GB Up to 120GB Up to 120GB Unlimited extras – – Antivirus, VPN and priority personal attention Antivirus, VPN, priority personal attention, advanced line management, call and SMS redirection included monthly price 7.50 euros 12.99 euros 19.99 euros 24.99 euros There are three fiber rates, they are named after Spanish cities and start at 29.95 euros per month. They all include a fixed IP and offer the option of installing a VPN for 5 euros per month. This is how the offer looks like: MADRID SANTANDER SEVILLE speed 300Mbps 600Mbps 1Gbps monthly price 29.95 euros 39.95 euros 49.95 euros Española de Telefonía also offers several combined fiber+mobile rates, for the most patriotic patriots. They are these: MADRID + Columbus SANTANDER + colón SEVILLE + Columbus Fiber 300 Mbps Mobile phone with unlimited calls and 120GB of data Fiber 600 Mbps Mobile phone with unlimited calls and 120GB of data 1Gbps Fiber Mobile phone with unlimited calls and 120GB of data monthly price 39.95 euros 49.95 euros 59.95 euros Beyond the packaging, if the question is whether Española de Telefonía offers something competitive, the answer is: no. Its most competitive mobile rate gives us unlimited calls and 15GB for 7.5 euros, but for example O2 has a rate with 50GB for 7 euros, and There are more operators that match and even exceed their proposal. As for fiber, Movistar itself offers the 300Mbps fiber for 19.9010 euros less than them. What Española de Telefonía does have, and that no other MVNO can easily replicate, is a logo with bull horns, an exacerbated love for Spain and above all for Bertín Osborne. If that is a sufficient purchase argument for you, you know where to call. Spanish people who understand your values ​​will assist you. Image | Spanish Telephony In Xataka | Angie Corine has made a name for herself in the Spanish rap scene with an unexpected commercial turn: she is right-wing

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