DRAM Prices To Drop 3-8% Due To Ukraine War, Inflation (theregister.com) 47
Taiwanese research firm TrendForce said Monday that DRAM pricing for commercial buyers is forecast to drop around three to eight percent across those markets in the third quarter compared to the previous three months. Even prices for DDR5 modules in the PC market could drop as much as five percent from July to September. The Register reports: This could result in DRAM buyers, such as system vendors and distributors, reducing prices for end users if they hope to stimulate demand in markets like PC and smartphones where sales have waned. We suppose they could try to profit on the decreased memory prices, but with many people tightening their budgets, we hope this won't be the case. The culprit for the DRAM price drop is one that we've been hearing a great deal about in the past few months: weaker demand for consumer electronics, including PCs and smartphones, as a result of high inflation and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, according to TrendForce.
The weaker consumer demand means DRAM inventories are building up at system vendors and distributors, which means they don't need to buy as much in the near future. This, in turn, is why memory prices are dropping, the research firm said. On the PC side, DDR4 memory pricing is expected to drop three to eight percent in the third quarter of 2022 after only seeing a zero to five percent decline in the second quarter. DDR5 pricing, on the other hand, is set to drop by only zero to five percent in Q3 after seeing a three to eight percent plummet in the previous quarter. For certain DRAM products, prices could see a steeper decline of more than eight percent, according to TrendForce, though the firm didn't say which products this would include. TrendForce said PC makers are focused on getting rid of their existing DRAM inventories, and a continuously "sluggish" market means they'll be reticent to buy much more memory.
The weaker consumer demand means DRAM inventories are building up at system vendors and distributors, which means they don't need to buy as much in the near future. This, in turn, is why memory prices are dropping, the research firm said. On the PC side, DDR4 memory pricing is expected to drop three to eight percent in the third quarter of 2022 after only seeing a zero to five percent decline in the second quarter. DDR5 pricing, on the other hand, is set to drop by only zero to five percent in Q3 after seeing a three to eight percent plummet in the previous quarter. For certain DRAM products, prices could see a steeper decline of more than eight percent, according to TrendForce, though the firm didn't say which products this would include. TrendForce said PC makers are focused on getting rid of their existing DRAM inventories, and a continuously "sluggish" market means they'll be reticent to buy much more memory.
Re:InDee (Score:4, Informative)
That's deflation, not inflation, right?
What TFA is claiming is that higher prices reduced demand which caused lower prices.
That is nonsense because DRAM prices fell earlier in the year so there were no "higher prices".
DRAM prices fluctuate. 3% to 8% in a quarter is completely normal. This shouldn't even be news.
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That's deflation, not inflation, right?
What TFA is claiming is that higher prices reduced demand which caused lower prices.
Not sure if that's what TFA was claiming.
However, general inflation does mean that people need to spend more on necessities like food and energy, leaving less for discretionary spending like upgrading PC, which translates to lower demand for DRAM.
Usually demand for luxury and vanity items drop during economic downturn, and DRAM could be considered a luxury item in some sense.
Saudi Arabia is nervous about gas prices (Score:3)
Re:Saudi Arabia is nervous about gas prices (Score:5, Interesting)
The demand for electric cars already exceeded production, so there is no real shift to EVs, despite reports to that effect. The real demand destruction for gasoline is from a number of factors:
* Reduced driving (shorter trips, carpooling, etc.)
* Multi-car families better optimizing use of their most efficient vehicle
* New sales of more efficient vehicles (instead of trucks and SUVs)
The last point is a minor impact since new cars are only a small percentage of the vehicles on the road, but the big question is whether consumers are spooked enough to stay away from inefficient vehicles for several years even if prices come back down, or if consumers will demonstrate typical short-sightedness and immediately forget history and only look at current prices.
The only impact this is likely to have on EVs is to push manufacturers to accelerate their EV production plans.
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* Reduced driving (shorter trips, carpooling, etc.)
In particular WFH reducing commute-type driving might have an impact?
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Maybe, but I'm under the impression that employers are cutting back on working from home. I don't think too many employees that were working in the office are moving back to working from home.
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Right. That's why Tesla is laying off 10% of it's staff as we speak.
10% of office staff while continuing to hire for plant workers.
Re: Saudi Arabia is nervous about gas prices (Score:4, Insightful)
How exactly does the president influence the gas price, that's something I didn't quite get.
You do know that being elected as the president doesn't grant you the magical power to just set prices at whatever you like, right?
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The President sets policy and surrounds himself with like-minded regulators who will set guidance and issue regulations that impact industry.
Biden campaigned on a strong, unwavering message of ending the American fossil fuel industry, and established an administration-while hostile posture that absolutely demolished any semblance of an appetite for capital investment. The result is that sources that have become uneconomical have not been replaced with new investment, and an industry that slowed due to lack
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You do know that gas prices worldwide are at an all-time high, yes? The gas price in Europe is around 10 dollars a gallon.
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Yeah, it was a mere coincidence that the Russian assault happened at the same time. It's all Biden's fault. Lemme guess, the inflation and wheat and corn getting more expensive, also all Biden, yes?
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Russia has also attacked Ukraine since Biden took office. And my cat died. All his fault?
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https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri... [whitehouse.gov]
He blocked the pipeline, which might have been active by now, but at the same time, he blocked all new leases for oil exploration, and has encouraged the EPA to slow walk all pipeline permits, which is holding up oil production on the leases that exist, where they have also found oil.
As for the worldwide impact, Oil is a worldwide industry, so the less oil available overall effects the whole world, not just the country with the person causing the issues. This is the same re
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Yes, that's why there was divestment from refining hydrocarbons. Like most other things that Green thought about reality, it turned out to be wrong. Demand is way up, supply is constrained and refining margins are higher than they were in a very long time.
And it takes about three years to get a new refinery going. We're starting to see investments in them again now, but prices aren't going to go down for at least a couple of years, unless there's a supply of mothballed refineries still somewhere that can be
Re:Saudi Arabia is nervous about gas prices (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much all of the fundamental requirements for making EVs that you don't need to for ICE vehicles? Russia is a major supplier. Ooops.
Russia produces 6% of the world's cobalt, but DRC produces ten times that much. 99% of the super-magnet rare earths are from China. The biggest producers of copper are in South America. Lithium is produced all over the world. Russia is a major nickel producer, but Indonesia produces five times as much.
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Did starvation due to lockdowns start cause you problems with vision in addition to brain damage?
Profit Margin (Score:4, Interesting)
The profit margin on DRAM manufacturing is fairly high. Google tells me that last December, it as at 46%, as opposed to 30% a year earlier. While not great for the stock prices at Micron and competitors, there's a lot of room for prices to fall if production continues to exceed demand.
Question for insiders (Score:3)
Russo-Ukrainian war basically halted production of neon needed for lithography lasers by the two huge refineries. Mariupol one is in ruins, and Odessa one cannot export because of the naval blockade in addition to the fact that much of its feed in materials were imported from Russian steel foundries.
When is the neon shortage going to reduce manufacturing? Because right now, it seems to be trucking on just fine, and I don't see the upcoming shortages priced in yet. Not in more advanced lithography needed for complex logic chips and apparently not in memory ones either. At least for now.
So how is the supply/reserves of neon holding up and has there been any potential attempts at replacing it with something else?
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Argon-fluorine-neon mix used in those lasers must be purged every couple of weeks and replaced because of contamination due to extreme operating conditions.
Here's a decent explanation of the basics: https://www.advancedsciencenew... [advancedsciencenews.com]
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The world wide existing chip factories already have lithography lasers.
The neon is only needed for new lasers which are put into new lithography machines that are either used/needed in new factories - aka not yet existing factories - or in upgrading factories.
So: how exactly is a little bit of lack of neon impacting chip prices?
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Ok, adding this one to the list of "Germany controls wind" and "No winters below -20C in Nothern Europe because of global warming" stupidity.
"Argon-fluorine-neon lasers only need neon at manufacturing and don't need it after".
In real life on the other hand, those lasers need a gas mix purge and replacement about every two weeks, because it gets contaminated.
Controller Prices Have Skyrocketed Because of War (Score:2)
Aaand definitions.... (Score:1)
The war in Ukraine? How? (Score:2)
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Ukraine was the biggest Neon "producer" in the world, more than the rest of the world combined.
Funny is, it is basically a waste product from producing liquid nitrogen, used for making fertilizers.
No idea why westerners always misinterpret the term "developing economy".
E.g. would you consider Thailand a developing country? Or Vietnam? Guess if one makes a new company on one of those countries: what machines is he buying? Obviously - counterintuitive for you folks - the best of the best money can buy. E.g. I