X-bit labs

Memory Prices Keep Going Down.

Category: Other

by Anna Filatova

[ 04/30/2002 | 11:05 PM ]

There is hardly any doubt left that the tendency towards constant price reduction has finally set up in the memory market, which is very pleasing for customers. The first signs of this tendency were noticed in the end of March (see this news story), and by now the situation has become very nice: the minimal prices for 128Mbit memory chip are lying now below $3 per unit (we remember the time when the manufacturers were planning to stop at $5 per piece). Just like a month ago, let us have a look at a few graphs showing the situation during the last three months (the info is taken from DRAMeXchange):

256Mbit (32M x 8) DDR266 SDRAM


128Mbit (16M x 8) DDR266 SDRAM


256Mbit (32M x 8) PC133 SDRAM


128Mbit (16M x 8) PC133 SDRAM

In fact, I don’t think that any detailed commentary is needed here. I would only like to stress that the price of 256Mbit PC133 SDRAM chips is now much higher than the price of DDR266 chips of the same capacity, while the cost of 128Mbit PC133 and DDR266 chips is almost equal. It proves once again that the production capacities are little by little moved from SDRAM to DDR SDRAM and from 128Mbit chips to 256Mbit chips.

And in conclusion I would like to say I am very pleased with the fact that my forecasts made here have come true: the memory makers didn’t manage to maintain high demand for memory and the prices started crawling down slowly. Though to be fair I should say that it happened about 2-4 weeks later than I had initially predicted.