RAM

The PC market is mortally wounded because of RAM. Excellent news for Apple’s plans

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If there was something missing from Apple’s catalog, it was undoubtedly the cheap MacBook. The non-Pro MacBook died a long time ago, the last attempt at a MacBook without a surname did not work and that role of “affordable” laptop fell into the Macbook Air. That laptop was still missing to stand up to the 800-900 euro market that Windows dominated at will and it turns out that Apple had the answer at home: the iPhone. Its processor, rather. Because that’s what he is macbook neo: the guts of a iPhone 16 Pro in a laptop chassis. In our analysis We lowered a bit what was being said about the MacBook neo, but pointing out that it was not only a very interesting device for a wide range of users, but a blow to the PC market. This is something that Apple does not want to miss and it seems that they have bent MacBook neo orders. However, they now face the “neo dilemma.” Stop or pay more, the neo dilemma To no one’s surprise, The MacBook neo worked like a charm in its first week. 699 euros for a perfect laptop for students, or for those of us who want a second computer, is an option that is difficult to reject. Because there are cheap laptops, but not with these battery features, system speed and, above all, build quality. For find something similar in Windows You have to go to more expensive models. In the midst of a memory crisis, furthermore, those 699 euros for the basic version seemed even more appealing. And it seems like Apple expected it to do well in the market, but maybe not so well. Tim Culpan is a former Bloomberg reporter, based in Taiwan and has a very interesting newsletter. Most importantly, you have some sources at the heart of the factories that produce components for these equipment. On your speaker, Blame point that Apple had planned a total shipment of between five and six million MacBook neo. Tim Cook described the reception of the laptop as “a demand through the roof”, showing himself very satisfied with its performance, and Apple was at a time when it had to take a decision to ensure the future of the device. The reason is that this laptop uses A18 Pro chips… different. They are the processors of the iPhone 16 Probut they were not suitable for the high standards of the iPhone. In this case, it implies that instead of six GPU cores, they had five. This happens with many other processors that are renamed or derived from more affordable products. They had a lot due to leftover shipments and they converted them into the guts of the laptop. These processors were practically “free” for Apple, but now Culpan points out that those in Cupertino had to decide whether to let the inventory run out or ask TSMC to manufacture a new batch. They have chosen the second. in a new publicationCulpan claims that Apple now aims to have a base of 10 million unitsdouble that initial forecast. But of course, ordering TSMC to manufacture a new batch of A18 Pro would mean having to pay a significantly higher price to build the laptop. This would greatly narrow the profit margin they have per unit sold. Although Apple to be TSMC’s second customerthe Taiwanese foundry does not work for free, obviously. A few days ago, Tim Cook pointed out to investors that Apple had been able to avoid the first wave of the RAM crisis due to the amount of stock accumulated, but that is over. After loading memory options both from Mac Studio as of Mac Miniit is evident that not even Apple is untouchable. Here, Culpan points to two scenarios. One is to eliminate the basic option of 256 GB of memory, which costs 699 euros, leaving only the 512 GB option for 799 euros. It would be the move they have already made with other products. The second letter is raise the price of both optionsbut giving some extra to “compensate”, such as extended free storage in the cloud for a period of time. We have already seen this strategy in the PC segment. The problem is that it doesn’t just increase the memory. Aluminum is also increasing and, no matter how little it increases, anything that increases the cost of a manufactured unit is something that will have an impact on the sales price. And there is another question. Since the MacBook neo was being manufactured with those A18 Pros that were not the best, when ordering a new batch you enter a scenario in which it is possible that the new MacBook neo are “better” than the ones we had until now. Simply because they have all six GPU cores intact. TSMC is not going to make them limited on purpose. Apple has the option of software limit one of the GPU coresbut in the end that is the least of the company’s problems at the moment. All components, including processors, have increased in price since the initial order a few months ago. If we are seeing something in the industry, it is that, in case it was not already clear, It is the user who ‘eats’ the problems either due to price increases or due to the impossibility of acquiring products because they simply do not exist. And something that we are also observing is that Apple is in that “neo dilemma” because they are seeing that the consequences of launching a product with an attractive price and a good value on a daily basis translates into they take it away like hot cakes. And all this within the context of the brutal component crisis that we are experiencing. In Xataka | Tim Cook optimized factories and processes, John Ternus builds things: what we can expect from the “new Apple”

the RAM crisis

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nintendo switch 2 is celebrating. Not because it has been on the market for almost a year (it will be on June 5 and must be near of the 20 million machines sold, an absolute outrage), but because Nintendo has just announced what has been expected for a few months. Nintendo Switch 2 will increase in price in all markets, being another example of an unusual situation in the world of console hardware. Because this generation is the first in which a console is cheaper at launch than after years of being on the market. In short. Through a publication On its website, the Japanese company has detailed how the new prices of Nintendo Switch 2 look. In the United States and Canada, prices without taxes will rise from 449.99 US dollars and 629.99 Canadian dollars to 499.99 and 679.99 dollars respectively. In Europe, where taxes are included, the recommended retail price will increase from 469.99 euros to 499.99 euros. That is, the price of the console alone is almost the same as the launch price plus ‘Mario Kart World’. In Japan, the prices of both the Nintendo Switch 2 Japanese Edition (which was cheaper than the Western one due to protectionist policies) and the Nintendo Switch OLED, Nintendo Switch and Switch Lite also increased. In Japan the measure will become effective on May 25, while in the rest of the world it will apply from September 1. Please understand. It pains me to refer to the famous phrase of an industry genius like Satoru Iwata (who was the beloved president of Nintendo), but in the press release, the Japanese company commented that they apologize for the impact of the price revision, but that they deeply appreciate our understanding. The problem is that, here, Nintendo is not entirely to blame. The company points to the “impact of several changes in market conditions that will extend in the medium and long term,” and that only means one thing: the blow of the component crisis reaches Nintendo. Since all NAND chip manufacturers are focused on creating chips for AI, there are no components left for the consumer market. It is difficult for a user to access an SSD, an HDD or a RAM stick, but for device manufacturers the costs also increase. We are seeing it in mobile phones, computers and even in an Apple that confessed that they had been able to avoid the first wave of the crisis, but that they can no longer continue to cushion the blow. In fact, several Apple options are disappearing from its store… and then we have Valve unable to launch its Steam Machine due to this crisis. what a generation…The price increase for Nintendo Switch 2 does not occur in a vacuum. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series were launched at the end of 2020 (in a nascent semiconductor crisis, too) and have since revised their price upwards on several occasions. Both reached 500 euros, but if now you want a PS5 You must pay 649.99 euros. And if you want the PS5 Pro, about 899.99 euros. The same thing has been happening with Xboxbut in the end it is something that makes less noise because Microsoft’s situation this generation of consoles is… complicated. We’ll see how things go with their new machine, a Project Helix whose CEO has just pointed out that it will be conditioned by the current market situation. It’s not going to be cheap, wow. Anomaly. Gone are the times when, by pure logic, consoles improved with the passing of the generation while they became cheaper. At first, the hardware is expensive and it costs companies more to manufacture it, but over the years these components become cheaper and improve in efficiency. Manufacturers were creating smaller consoles, with better features in some cases and, above all, more accessible. The current generation breaks with that logic because we are chaining component crises with market crises and, currently, both at the same time. That’s why it was logical to expect the price increase for Nintendo Switch 2: it was just a matter of time. The “good” news is that it seems that Nintendo will not give the order to retailers to increase the recommended price until September. The bad news is that the stock may not arrive until that date. By the way, in Japan they are also raising the price of Nintendo Switch Online… and there is no RAM crisis to justify it. In Xataka | In Xataka | The price of RAM has skyrocketed and the best example to see the debacle is a 100 euro PC: the Raspberry Pi

RAM aims to become even more expensive

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For years we have accepted that mobile phones were rising in price in exchange for better cameras, better screens, faster processors and, so to speak, increasingly refined designs. We have also begun to assume that on-device AI does not come free: it usually requires more power, more storage and more memory. The surprise is that one of the next blows may come precisely from there, from mobile RAM, a component that usually goes unnoticed, but is very present in the real cost of each smartphone that hits the market. The clearest signal comes from the LPDDR5Xone of the most relevant mobile memories on the current market and which was already coming from an unusual movement. According to TrendForce datathis type of report registered a quarter-on-quarter increase of between 58% and 63% in the first quarter of 2026. This is the largest quarterly increase in its history. What is striking is that this jump does not seem to have closed the cycle: the forecast for the second quarter points to an even more intense rise. If we focus on the forecast for the second quarter, the scale of the problem changes. A projection attributed to TrendForce, shared Jukan Choipoints out that mobile DRAM contract prices will grow between 93% and 98% in quarter-on-quarter terms during that period. In other words: we are not talking about one more increase in a stressed market, but rather a jump close to doubling the price in just three months. For the smartphone industry, a figure like this is not background noise. It should be noted that TrendForce works with paid reports aimed mainly at institutional investors, analysts and companies in the sector, so the full document is not openly available. The relevant part for this article has emerged through Choi, a semiconductor analyst at Citrini Research. The expert accumulates more than 100,000 followers on X and his comments have been cited by media such as The Economistwhich included them in an article about the impact of AI on consumer electronics. The impact on the price of RAM in mobile phones Here we are not talking about the price that a user sees when looking for memory in a store. Mobile DRAM is negotiated in another area: that of contracts between memory manufacturers, such as Samsung, SK Hynix or Micronand large customers who buy enormous volumes to integrate these chips into their products. This world is made up of mobile brands, server manufacturers and other OEMs. That is why the data matters: it does not describe a specific purchase, but rather the base cost with which the industry begins to manufacture its next devices. The rise doesn’t appear out of nowhere either. SemiAnalysis noted at the beginning of April 2026 that DRAM prices could more than double this year and record another double-digit increase in 2027. The same firm noted that the contract price of LPDDR5 had risen more than 3 times since the first quarter of 2025, and that it was likely to exceed $10/GB on the open market during the first quarter of 2026. That is, the second quarter does not inaugurate the tension: the accelerates. DRAM prices could more than double this year and see another double-digit increase in 2027. The backdrop is AI. HBM memory, key to powering the GPUs that power many artificial intelligence data centers, remains in a situation of structural scarcity and absorbs a good part of the sector’s investment. The consequence is easy to understand: if a good part of the money, productive capacity and attention of manufacturers is directed to that high-bandwidth memory, there is less margin to alleviate strain on other DRAM families. Among them is mobile memory, which now competes in a much more demanding supply chain. Added to this is another important detail: smartphone-class memory no longer lives only within the smartphone. NVIDIA uses LPDDR5X in its Grace and Vera processorsdesigned for AI-linked server systems. The reading for the mobile market is clear: a technology used in phones and compact devices is also part of architectures that compete for resources at the center of the race for artificial intelligence. The difference with the PC world helps to understand it better. If we build a computer, we can choose how much RAM to buy, look for an offer and install the module ourselves. It doesn’t work like that with cell phones: we buy a complete device, with the memory already integrated and no real margin to intervene later. That makes the rise of the LPDDR not seen directlybut it doesn’t mean it disappears. It is incorporated into the cost of manufacturing the phone and, from there, it can end up influencing the price we pay. Counterpoint helps convert that increase in price in a figure that is much easier to visualize. For a high-end configuration, with 16 GB of LPDDR5X HKMG and 512 GB of UFS 4.1 storage, the firm projected an increase in BOM between 100 and 150 dollars for the second quarter of 2026. We are talking about the cost of materials, not the sales price, so it is not advisable to mechanically transfer that figure to the consumer. Even so, it is a sign that does not go unnoticed. The bad news, therefore, is not that all mobile phones are going to increase in price automatically or in the same proportion. That will depend on each manufacturer.their contracts, their margins and how they configure each range. But the factor is there: if mobile memory becomes more expensive with this force, the cost of manufacturing a smartphone inevitably changes. And in a market that was already getting us used to increasingly demanding prices, RAM is emerging as another obstacle for those who expected a price drop in the short term. Images | PR MEDIA | Samsung In Xataka | Apple had been able to maintain prices despite the crazy rise in RAM. That’s over

Chrome has always liked to gobble up RAM. Now download a multi-gigabyte AI model without warning

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Chrome is part of the digital routine of millions of people to the point that we often stop wondering what exactly it does while we browse. We use it for almost everything, we trust it with sessions, extensions, passwords, searches and a good part of our life on the Internet. That is why it is so surprising to find a folder larger than 4 GB associated with an AI model downloaded by the browser itself. We are not talking about a minor update or a residual file, but rather a large component that many users probably did not expect to see there. The conversation began to take shape from a publication by Alexander Hanff in That Privacy Guy. Their finding, in essence, was simple to understand: according to its logs, Chrome had left a multi-gigabyte AI model on his computer without giving him a clear warning during the process. From that clue I did the checking on my own computer, used from Spain, and found the same folder that Hanff refers to: OptGuideOnDeviceModel, within Chrome’s internal files. In my case, macOS shows that folder as 4.27 GB in size, even though features like the Gemini sidebar are not yet available in this market. Gemini Nano downloaded to my computer Gemini Nano It does not work like a traditional download that we search for, accept and install manually. In the Chrome developer documentationthe company explains that the integrated AI capabilities are intended to be fluid and that model management is done automatically in the background. It also notes that the initial download can be triggered when an AI feature built into the browser needs to use the Gemini Nano for the first time. In other words: the model can reach the computer as part of Chrome’s internal workings, not necessarily through a clear and recognizable action for the user. An AI model that goes beyond an integrated chatbot The model is not limited to promoting a browser with a chatbot integrated within Chrome. Google has already described uses Gemini Nano on the device itself to detect technical support scams, a type of threat that often lasts a very short time online and can escape traditional tracking systems. In that scenario, Chrome can provide the model with content from the page the user is visiting to extract risk cues. AI, therefore, can also be part of the browser’s security layer. Gemini Nano also boosts security features in Chrome That’s where a good part of the discomfort lies. AI in the browser can have reasonable uses, from helping detect fraud to powering writing, translation or summarization functions, but the problem arises when the user does not fully understand what has been downloaded, why it is there and how they can manage it. Hanff sums it up with a very direct criticism: “Chrome didn’t ask. Chrome does not show it to the user. If the user deletes it, Chrome downloads it again.” There are also voices that reduce the seriousness of the case. On Reddit, a user defended that the model is only downloaded when someone tries to use an AI function that needs it and that it can also be disabled from the Chrome options. Hanff responded that his logs showed otherwise: the browser opened on schedule, stayed on a page for a few minutes without interaction, and still left a trace of the download. Beyond that specific discussion, Google’s own documentation points to a middle ground: the download can be triggered by built-in functions and continue in the background even if the tab that started it is closed. Chrome does offer controls to reduce the presence of some AI features, but it doesn’t concentrate everything in a single, easy-to-understand panel. From settings can be disabled or hide certain visible pieces, such as Gemini in the markets where it is available, typing assistance, search history or AI-powered search. To go deeper, however, We must enter more technical terrain, such as experimental options from chrome://flags. This jump changes the experience quite a bit: we are no longer talking about turning off a clear function, but rather touching internal parts that may also be linked to features that the user may want to keep. Firefox offers an easy way to disable AI features Firefox offers an interesting counterpoint because Mozilla has grouped its AI controls in its own section within the settings. Since Firefox 148, that section is now available as “AI controls” and allows you to block current and future improvements from a visible place, without having to chase options spread throughout the browser. It also separates specific sections, such as on-device AI, translations and chatbot providers in the sidebar. It is a more direct approach: the user not only sees that these functions exist, they also better understand what they can activate, block or leave available. The arrival of Gemini Nano to Chrome is part of a broader movement: browsers want to become more than just a window to the Internet and start executing AI tasks within the computer itself. That direction can have real advantages, especially if it serves to strengthen security or make some functions more agile. But the case also leaves a visible panorama. Some users won’t mind at all that Chrome downloads local models automatically; others, instead, they will want to knowunderstand what it is for and have room to decide. Images | Xataka with Grok | Screenshot In Xataka | It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t climb stairs and it doesn’t even always obey: this is the robot that the creator of the Roomba has been wanting to develop for 30 years

In the middle of the RAM crisis, your cheapest computer was a bargain too good to last

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If there is a product in Apple’s portfolio that was a real candy, it was the Mac Mini. This has been a reality for years, but in these times that are even more so: the Mac Mini M4 It came to the market with the power of the M4 chip, 16 GB of base RAM, a 256 GB SSD (the most stingy, Apple style) and a RRP of 719 euros, which in practice was much less. I bought it myself for less than 600 euros. Well, that bargain has come to an end: in the context of current shortages, the 256GB Mac Mini is no longer an option. We had already seen it with its models with more RAMbut this decision is dramatic for the general public. Goodbye to the 256 GB Mac Mini. Apple has made a decision that directly affects the pockets of those who want to buy the Mac mini in its most basic version. Since yesterday, May 1, 2026, Cupertino has removed that entry model from its catalog, as Joe Rossignol advances for MacRumors. It is not that it appears out of stock, it is that it has directly disappeared, as can be seen on the Spanish website. Of course, there is still stock and offers of the old base model in stores like amazon, at Media Markt either in El Corte Inglés. The entry price of the Apple desktop computer starts at 969 euros and corresponds to the version with M4 chip, 16 GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. In the United States the jump has been from 599 dollars to 799 dollars, in Spain it has gone from 719 euros to 969 euros. The versions with the M4 Pro processor remain as they are. This decision is framed within a structural RAM supply crisis and whose main culprit is the voracity of the AI ​​infrastructure. Prices and delivery for the Mac Mini. Apple Why is it important. Raising the entry price of one of its star products by almost 35% (in the United States it is 33) more is an aggressive move that has implications for both the individual consumer and the technology market in general. It is true that technically speaking Apple has not raised its prices, it has simply eliminated the lower step, leaving orphans those people who considered that base version sufficient, which are quite a few: it is my main computer for mixed tasks, basic editing, office automation and the Internet and the performance is more than good. In short: for many users, students or professionals, with tight budgets, this increase of more than 200 euros is a real chore. The problem is not just the price: the impact is worsened by delivery times. I have tried different Apple Stores and shipping is delayed until the end of May or beginning of June. Context. Tim Cook gave an explanation during the conference results for April 30, 2026 recognizing that the supply of Mac mini and Mac Studio is severely restricted and that normalization could take months. The reason given by the still CEO of Apple is that both devices have become popular platforms for artificial intelligence and agentic tools, which has triggered demand above forecasts. And he anticipated something: Apple will face significantly higher memory costs in the current quarter, according to MacRumors. This places the Mac Mini in a paradox: that the configuration of this compact desktop computer makes it ideal for working with AI locally and that precisely this reality is what has exhausted the stock, forcing Apple to cut its catalog. The AMR crisis continues to claim victims. In March of this year Apple already removed the 512 GB RAM option from the Mac Studio and in April several models of the Mac mini and Mac Studio they directly stopped being able to order in the Apple Store in the United States, with delays of up to five months for versions with more RAM. The memory chip supply crisis is not something exclusive to Apple, but a trend that crosses the entire sector and caused by the demand of the hyperscalers. Apple needs to ensure that every machine sold is capable of fluidly running its new digital agents and AI tools, making lower memory and storage configurations no longer viable or cost-effective under the company’s current standards. The particular thing about Apple’s decision is the timing: just when it launches its best chips for local AI processing, the global RAM market is strained to unsuspected limits precisely because of that fever. The result is paid by the final consumer. In Xataka | Not even Apple is free from the new reality of the technology industry: RAM goes first for hyperscalers In Xataka | The RAM crisis was supposed to make computers and smartphones very expensive. Apple has another opinion Cover | Apple and Alberto García

BYD promised them very happy by putting very advanced ADAS in very cheap cars. Until the RAM crisis came

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In recent years, BYD had turned its brand new advanced driving system into one of the biggest arguments to confront Tesla. And having this type of technology in affordable cars can be attractive to the consumer, but it has a cost that other companies can hardly absorb. BYD thought so, but the RAM crisis It has stopped him, and the context is now much more complicated. Prices go up. BYD just announced in China a 21% increase in the price of the ‘DiPilot 300’ option (basically its “God’s Eye” in its version with LiDAR), which goes from 9,900 to 12,000 yuan (about 1,560 euros). The company justifies the measure by the “significant increase in global storage hardware costs.” In other words, DRAM memory and storage have become so expensive that they can no longer absorb the cost without passing it on to the customer. Until now, no major manufacturer had so explicitly linked a price increase to the memory market, according to collect South China Morning Post. In detail. The ADAS Modern ones (and especially those that integrate LiDAR like those from BYD) are very demanding on memory. They need high-performance chips to process LiDAR point clouds in real time, run driving models, and store route data. The problem is that this same type of memory is being absorbed en masse by artificial intelligence data centers, which account for most of the global production of DRAM and NAND. The prices of these chips have entered what analysts call a “supercycle,” with increases that according to TrendForce are around 55-60% in conventional DRAM this year, but that in premium automotive segments (which also use DDR5) have reached up to 300% in free market price. A problem of scale. BYD’s colossal deployment makes the problem especially bulging in its case. The company has installed your “God’s Eye” system in more than 2.85 million vehicles as of March 2026, generating approximately 180 million kilometers of driving data per day, according to own data of the signature. At that scale, every extra cent in memory multiplies into millions. On the other hand, BYD closed the first quarter of 2026 with its worst net profit in three years: 4.08 billion yuan, a drop of 55% compared to the same period of the previous year, according to figures published by the company. In this context, maintaining prices without making a move has become unsustainable for the company. They are not alone. Chery, Xiaomi and the Huawei Aito brand prices have also increased on models with similar advanced driving systems in recent months. William Li, founder and CEO of Nio, counted in January that the biggest cost pressure of the year would not come from raw materials, but from memory. What changes for the buyer. The founding promise of “God’s Eye” was that autonomous driving would no longer be an expensive privilege. As we counted almost a year agothe experience of the system on the highway (even in the most economical model, the Dolphin Surf/Seagull, which sells for around 9,000 euros in China at the exchange rate) was genuinely impressive. Lane keeping was impeccable, autonomous lane changes were well executed and traffic management rivaled other premium range systems. BYD even planned to distribute it as standard in all its models, regardless of the price. Although that narrative is not dead, it is beginning to have nuances. At the moment, the version with LiDAR (the most capable) is already a payment option that has just become 21% more expensive. And now what. From Counterpoint Research they point that the blow will be uneven: low-end models simply will not carry this technology, and high-end ones have less price-sensitive buyers. The greatest impact falls on the mid-segment, where BYD’s value proposition was most disruptive. As the markets are, we will have to wait to find out what direction the company finally takes. Cover image | BYD In Xataka | Cuba is experiencing a brutal energy crisis, so a Cuban has used ingenuity to fuel his car: charcoal

The RAM crisis is very good news for someone. That someone is Samsung

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The great supply crisis in 2026 is starring memoirs. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron control 90% of global DRAM production, and can currently only cover about 60% of projected demand. This is bad news for consumers, and excellent news for giants that cannot keep up with selling memory. Tell Samsung. Samsung Electronics has published its financial report corresponding to the first quarter of 2026. The company recorded revenue of 133.9 trillion won and, so that we understand each other better, this is its all-time quarterly high, with a 43% increase compared to the previous quarter. Memories, memories, memories. The figure is even more surprising if we look closely at the Device Solutions Division, in which its memory business is located. It recorded a sales increase of 86% compared to the previous quarter, with a historical record in operating profit. Samsung itself details that this boom comes from the hand of much higher demand and, to no one’s surprise, a sales price that has increased in the industry. It is not something isolated. Sales related to memories and semiconductors will continue with strong demand throughout the second quarter, Samsung predicts. The company wants to continue capitalizing on demand for GPUs, CPUs and DRAMexpecting advances in agentic AI to continue accelerating demand growth. Why is it important. Samsung’s results are not only good news for the company’s shareholders: they are a reflection of a change in the industry that is here to stay. The RAM crisis will change forever the price of the products we buywill make companies that have never participated in the manufacture of memories have to start considering doing so, like teslaand positions manufacturers like Samsung in a position of power that they have not had for years. The new Samsung. Samsung has always been relevant in semiconductors and memories, but currently this division accounts for 94% of the company’s total operating profit. Virtually every won Samsung earns comes from its device solutions business (RAM and chips). And what about mobile phones?. Although Samsung’s near future will be led by a single division, the company gives enough clues about its future in a territory that touches the average user very closely: mobile phones. Its DX division (in which smartphones are found) grew 19%, with more sales and more profit compared to the previous quarter. Samsung expects a slight drop in revenue next quarter, although it will continue to focus on three clear pillars: high end, folding and series A. In Xataka | There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk

They say things get worse before they get better. The RAM crisis teaches us that they can always get worse

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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 In Xataka | TSMC’s only problem was that it was in Taiwan. So the United States has decided to get her out of there

there is no RAM for everyone and hyperscalers have absolute priority

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When Gabe Newell, head of Valve, asked for help a few weeks ago to find RAM memory anyway and be able to take out his Steam Machine, the comment was half joking… half serious. It was planted in the same GDC in which NVIDIA took advantage of its technology of artificial intelligence to beg beg for some RAM. It was not a situation that caught us by surprise, since we have had quite negative news since 2025 regarding memory supply. RAM, SSD, hard drives and any element that the monster data centers to function. But the wheel does not stop, devices must continue to be launched and the problem is that, beyond the initial ‘run’, no one knows very well if they will be able to continue selling the hardware. And it is a problem that concerns even Apple. Neither one of the main clients of a giant like TSMC is above the needs of the hyperscalers. And he is already suffering the consequences: They have stopped selling Mac models with high amounts of RAM in a coup, especially for professional users who need all the memory possible on their computers. There are no Macs with a lot of RAM left, kid, only Maxibon A few hours ago, media like 9to5Mac and Macrumors They echoed the problem. If you went to Apple’s settings page and tried to purchase a Mac Mini or a mac studio with the largest amount of RAM available (64 GB and 256 GB respectively), the warning was not the one that usually appears on occasions of “it will take x weeks”, but rather a “not available”. That already made us suspect that something was wrong with the supply, but it is also not an isolated problem in the Apple Store in the United States. If right now we go to the Spanish page to configure either of the two Macs with the maximum amount of RAM, it directly sends the same message that it is not available. This goes beyond the classic “reserve and we ship it on a certain date”, it implies that Apple does not accept orders for those specific models. And it is not an anecdote. As pointed out MacRumorsa few weeks ago Apple quietly removed the option to configure Mac Studio with 512 GB, which already indicated that something was up. Other configurations had delivery times of one to five months, and the fact that both models cannot now be configured with the maximum versions of RAM suggests that they will probably also end up disappearing from the store. For most users, 16 and even 32 GB of RAM is more than enough, but those who configure a Mac Mini and Mac Studio model with 64 or 256 GB of RAM do so because it is necessary. It is no longer so much the extra price as it is knowing that that amount of RAM is needed for professional tasks, and eliminating the option (just when Apple has killed the Mac Pro) can be a problem for a niche of users who precisely need these features. For now, if we are going to configure a MacBook Pro, we can choose the maximum amount of RAM without a problem (beyond the longer waiting times than when there was no global supply problem), but in the background there is a much bigger problem. The estimates They point out that RAM producers will increase their production by 16% year-on-year, a figure very far from market needs. Analysts predict that this shortage will last until 2027 or 2028, but also there are more negative estimates They point to 2029 or 2030 to begin to see the market recovery. As soon as possible. And, although we focus on Apple because it is always the most striking case, we have already commented the case of the Steam Machine which cannot be launched because Valve does not have RAM… and there are more cases from manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo or Asus turning to the Chinese market to be able to launch teams. Computex is one of the big annual events for PC manufacturers and is just around the corner in the middle of an unprecedented crisis. Because there is no RAM, there is no SSD, hard drives are in danger and even graphics cards are not secured. The truth is that it will be interesting to cover the event because the Manufacturers and sellers are going to have to juggle with the little that is available to them. And in Apple’s own upcoming calendar, we will have WWDC where, supposedly, there will be new professional processors. And, no matter how much there are new Apple Silicon, if these professionals cannot configure their computers with large amounts of RAM… it will not be worth much. It could also be a movement in anticipation of the renewal of the equipment, but they eliminated the 512 GB in March and now this is strange. In short, and as has been happening for months, everything is wrong with the RAM market. In Xataka | “We buy anything”: there are stores in Japan so desperate for PC components that anything is worth it

With the RAM market in crisis, an unexpected winner appears: China

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The saying goes that, in a troubled river, fishermen gain. In the case of the RAM crisisto a troubled market, manufacturers profit. All devices need NAND chips. They are the ones that go into the RAM memory or the storage that is used from the mobile phone to the car, the router and the SD memories and Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are the ones that control the majority of the production. The data centers need a huge amount of memorywhich has caused everything other than producing for them to be missing out on a large portion of the pie, which is why the three companies have thrown themselves into it. And, since their most important factories cannot do more, they have made the decision to inject a lot of money into China, which is not their favorite scenario, but what gives immediate relief. And all the extra RAM they make… it’s not going to be for us. Exploited. A few weeks ago we said that Jensen Huang, boss of NVIDIA, had met with senior officials from the Asian technology industry, including executives from TSMC and Samsung. He told the first ones to get their act together because NVIDIA was going to need a lot of wafers this year. In the seconds, more of the same, but with HBM4 memory new generation. Shortly after, it was Lisa Su, AMD’s boss, who visited Samsung’s offices in South Korea to reach a deal for HBM4 memory of South Koreans for AMD’s new platform focused on artificial intelligence. Everything moves to the tune of AI training and inference. We are talking about Samsung, but SK Hynix is ​​also developing new generation memory and the objective is the same: to produce everything possible because, although as users we cannot buy RAM or SSD and Valve can’t make the Steam Machinethey are doing great. Wons galore. The problem is that, although the numbers come out, the production lines can’t take it anymore. There are very few companies to create RAM that supplies a brutal demand, and that means that they either expand… or they don’t arrive. And that is precisely what they are doing, but looking at the industrial fabric that can serve as support: what they have been manufacturing in China. In SCMP we can read that Samsung is going to intensify its investment in its Xi’an plant. Specifically, 67.5% compared to the previous year. This will bring the investment to 465.4 billion won -about 264 million euros- in the Chinese plant. This is Samsung’s only plant abroad, and also one of the company’s most important because it is estimated to produce 40% of South Koreans’ NAND memory. The million-dollar investment comes after a few years of hiatus, but they are not the only ones. SK Hynix is ​​also going to inject 581.1 billion won -331 million euros- into its Dalian plant. It is 52% more than in the previous period and the largest disbursement since they acquired the factory in 2022. Immediate relief. The information They point out that it is not so much to produce more, but to satisfy the demand for cutting-edge memories. Recently, Samsung began mass manufacturing the HBM4 memory and SK Hynix the fastest DDR5 memory, and this strategy is focused on the two plants manufacturing that advanced memory instead of the rest of the factories having to adapt to the cutting-edge memory creation processes in order to continue dedicating themselves to other types of NAND chips. It also responds to a more pragmatic vision. Setting up a memory factory is not cheap, but above all, it is not fast. It takes about four or five years to build, polish the clean rooms and optimize the operational lines. It is much faster to adapt existing factories to obtain a much faster response. The reason is that they need wafers, and they need them now. From SK warned that the global shortage of wafers exceeds 20% and, probably, the situation will continue until 2030. Not very favorable weather. The curious thing is that this increase in investments occurs when the situation between China and the United States continues to be very turbulent. Although they have been relaxing, the United States imposed export controls on advanced chip manufacturing equipment destined for China. As much as Samsung is moving money and advanced machines to Samsung, it is in China and that means they must obey Washington’s order. There is licenses and annual permits and, both Samsung and SK Hynix, have a deadline to be able to send tools to their facilities, which are the ones they are taking advantage of because it is estimated that China represents 40% of Samsung’s NAND production and between 40% and 45% of SK Hynix’s. In fact, the company has another plant in Wuxi from which 30% of its NAND chips come out. China, from chill. Whether there is an upsurge in export orders or not remains to be seen. What is on the table at this moment is that China, “without doing anything” (and this with many quotes) is emerging as a very important player in this playing field. It is not only that Samsung and SK Hynix, the two most powerful in the sector, have greatly increased investment in their territory, but that their own RAM companies can see in this scenario the boost they needed to place themselves in the global conversation. One of the largest manufacturers in the country is CXMT and not only have they been polishing their manufacturing process in recent months to create 8,000 MHz DDR5 memories, but they have scaled their production capacity to reach a global market share of between 11% and 13%. Together with the manufacturer YMTC, they are emerging as an opportunity for brands like Lenovo, Dell or Asus, which need RAM to continue selling computers, have available without drastically increasing the price of their equipment. But hey, as we have said more than once in recent weeks, all the extra RAM they manufacture is … Read more

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