X-bit labs

Memory Prices Down, but Set Up to Mount.

Category: Memory

by Anton Shilov

[ 06/09/2004 | 08:09 AM ]

Pricing of Dynamic Random Access Memory favours buyers at the moment, analysts say, but the decline may end pretty soon when manufacturers of personal computers start preparations for back-to-school season and the demand for memory will pick up.

After incredible raise in March and April this year, prices for the most popular flavours of DRAM have fallen about 24% since the peak in April, Reuters reports. The reason for that was the weakening demand for memory and other system components from white-box PC makers. But while current spot-pricing is something that consumers may be happy about, rising demand in July and August may skyrocket DRAM pricing on the market.

In the spot market, prices have fallen 24% to around $4.80 at the end of May from a peak of $6.30 for typical DDR SDRAM chips in early April. Meanwhile large memory makers supplied their customers 256Mb DDR products for about $5.

End-users seeking for additional memory for their personal computers should pay attention to local memory markets now and purchase within the next 6-7 weeks while the prices on memory modules remain on relatively low level.

System makers are not likely to increase pricing of personal computers substantially because of growing memory costs since the majority, except Dell, holds inventory of hardware components or receive DRAMs at fixed prices according to contracts and are not likely to suffer from rising prices of memory. White-box makers may swell prices of their PCs, but also not really tangibly.