It is likely that the prices of electronic products that use NAND flash memory (almost all of them) will continue to rise, as reported by Reuters, Samsung has raised the prices of its individual memory chips by up to 60% since September.
This adds to the news published earlier this month, according to which the price of DRAM memory for desktop computers had increased by more than 170% year-over-year.
And primarily driven by the high demand for the construction of new data centers focused on artificial intelligence, memory manufacturers also do not plan to increase production, just in case the demand runs out.
A market manipulation to earn more money
With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence infrastructure development, several situations of critical hardware shortages caused by demand have occurred throughout 2025.
It started with graphics cards, when a new generation arrived at the beginning of the year. Even when that calmed down, energy costs began to rise for communities living near the new data centers, and even Microsoft could not find the power it needed to run the GPUs it had purchased.
But now the domino effect of the AI explosion is reaching further and deeper, and it has been affecting memory for several months. DRAM prices have skyrocketed and, apparently, behind the scenes, Samsung has drastically increased the prices per chip. Reuters reports that the contract price for 32 GB of DDR5 was $149 in September, but it is now $239.
And although this effect has been more clearly noticed among gamers who play on PC and want to upgrade their DDR5 kits (like in my case), DRAM is present everywhere. A severe shortage or a significant price increase affects almost everything, from smartphones to laptops, including IoT devices and smart appliances.
Signs of scarcity have triggered panic buying in some markets, Reuters reported at the end of October that memory manufacturers were receiving double or triple the orders, as companies are stockpiling supplies to protect against supply restrictions.