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DDR SDRAM Shortages to Last Long

by Anna Filatova
12/05/2001 | 02:01 AM

Well, it looks as if the manufacturers still managed to succeed in making the demand for memory grow. Maybe not everywhere, but only in the DDR SXDRAM market, and not quite voluntary, but still...
The overall stir connected with the sudden memory prices growth, which we described in great detail here, seems to have come to an end, so that the whole situation now looks as follows:

SDRAM prices seems to have got more or less stable even despite the desire of two Korean giants (Samsung and Hynix) to rise the chips costs. They either failed to come to an agreement with the largest PC assemblers, or they simply gave up this idea, however, we can now point out one very evident thing: the minimal cost of 256MB PC133 SDRAM modules fell below $20 (as we have already mentioned here), according to Pricewatch. And the average costs rest between $17 and $25 (almost on the same level as they used to be a week ago).
DDR SDRAM prices have also got somewhat more stable, but on a bit different less pleasing level. Because of the shortages detected on November 29, the minimal price for a 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM module reached $38 (a week ago it was $34), and the average price now rose up to $45-$50 (a week ago it was around $40-$45).

But the worst thing is that analysts forecast the DDR SDRAM shortages to last for quite a long time: until Q1 2002, even despite the fact that all the manufacturers report significant production increase of DDR SDRAM chips (see this news story). And it means that the prices will not go any lower in the near future. We wish they could at least stop growing…
As for SDRAM, the prices shouldn’t grow too much (if the manufacturers do not think of anything else to make them grow). However, the little growth is still inevitable as the production will slowly shift from SDRAM to DDR SDRAM.

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