With the price of some computer comments having increased (or in the case of RAM tripled in price), Micron and Samsung have announced withdrawals of product ranges. What do I predict the impacts of these decisions will be?
Begging with Micron, they’ve announced a major shift towards the currently booming AI market. AI in this case being an abbreviation of artificial intelligence, though it could be argued whether or not this is artificial intelligence in the true sense, but perhaps that could be an article in itself. As part of this shift, Micron are ending their consumer facing brand Crucial which includes SATA and M.2 solid state drives (SSDs) and RAM. However, production of chips continues but these will be produced on behalf of other brands and manufacturers.
This will have a big impact. Crucial have built a reputation for offering value for money, and their products have been widely available and widely affordable. The removal of a competitor brand is likely to drive further price increases, and will particularly affect hobby PC builders and enthusiasts that are unlikely to be able to benefit from wholesale prices (though some manufacturers such as Dell are already hinting at price increases due to the jump in the price of RAM). Gamers are likely to be severely impacted due to the large volume of data that are required for modern games. Whilst some users may be able to switch back to older mechanical hard drives, gamers require the high speed data transfers of SSDs for games to run smoothly.
Micron have said that they will continue producing chips required for SSDs and RAM for other manufacturers, but with supply already being diverted to AI, it’s likely that other manufacturers will also face price increases due to the restricted supply. In effect, this will have a double whammy impact, as not only will consumer demand be forced to all smaller number of suppliers, but those are suppliers will likely have to pass on increased costs as well.
Turning briefly to Samsung, I’m less concerned by their decision. Samsung don’t have a huge range of direct to consumer PC components, with their range largely focused on high performance SSDs. They’ve confirmed that the are continuing with the PCIe M.2 form factor SSDs, but are discontinuing SATA based drives. Most modern motherboards support M.2 drives, and the decision to focus on these should lead to the same or better quality products going forward without the distraction of trying to support legacy technology. The numbers of impact users are likely to be small, and those that can’t have a M.2 drive are likely to have an older computer and be seeking a more mid range or entry level drive in any case.
The market is certainly one to watch. Thankfully I upgraded the RAM in my desktop at the start of the year when prices were much lower (around a third of today’s prices), and have spare sticks available for other projects so I don’t need to buy any time soon. The prices of SSDs is a little more concerning (for myself at least), as I had been looking at storage upgrades. That being said, whilst SSD prices are rising they’re still only around 5 to 20% more expensive depending on the type/size. RAM prices seem to have peaked, but I predict supply is likely to be the issue over the next year. SSDs seem to be a little harder to predict.