A lack of capital investment by the manufacturers of DRAM has led analysts to believe there will be a shortage of memory.
The reason is lack of capital investment because the DRAM players have been through a chilly two or three years.
According to DRAM Exchange, there’s already a shortage of some memory densities because there’s been a recovery in the PC market. It claimed that some PC OEMs had paid $55 for DDR2/2GB modules in the spot market.
While capital expenditure is growing in 2009, and will reach between $10 billion to $12 billion between 2011 and 2012, 2010 PC shipment year on year growth could reach as high as 13 percent.
4GB modules will be the standard for consumer PCs, while high level products will take 6GB of memory. An anticipated recovery in sales of PCs to corporations in the second half of 2010 will put pressure on prices.
This figure below, courtesy of DRAM Exchange, shows the trend for DDR3 one gigabit chips – comfortably higher than the cost to make the chips, and indicating DRAM companies are likely to return to profitability – they hope. The manufacturers also hope that DDR3-DDR2 crossover, long awaited, will materialize in the first half of next year.
