An interesting article appeared at Electronic News. The guys claim that the current favourable situation in the DRAM market, when the prices of the most widely spread memory modules are not that high at all, could quickly swing to shortages and higher prices. This is a not very pleasing forecast, in fact. However, there are a few people in the memory industry who share it:

"In the April-May timeframe we will first start to see the signs of switching to next-generation memory," said one industry veteran who now works for Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany. "As companies adjust their product mix, there will be shortages all over the place."

They also claim that many DRAM makers are now losing money on certain types of SDRAM. The rush to offload unprofitable product lines could cause some specific shortages. Here is one more opinion:

"There will be a structured shortage," said Dieter Mackowiak, senior vice president of memory sales and marketing at Samsung Semiconductor Inc., a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. "Everybody is trying to reduce 128Mbit SDRAM as much as possible because it’s not a profitable product right now, like EDO or RDRAM".

Well, the "bad days" are forecast to come in March, so there is not so much waiting left. However, let’s not give way to pessimism. Just like Jeff Mailloux, director of DRAM marketing at Micron technology Inc. in Boise:

"I wouldn’t say we’re seeing any kind of shortages. We’re just trying to get our mix to match up with what our customers are expecting. I don’t really foresee any big issues with the DDR ramp. The DDR ramp is going pretty smoothly and there’s a lot of flexibility there. In terms of total DDR supply and demand, there’s pretty good supply vs. demand."