Technology

Get the Lenovo worker who said this. We shall dip him slowly into a volcano until he changes his mind.

That assumes Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron won't have competition in the next few years, but that's already not true with the Chinese CXMT and YMTC. And the more they drive the prices up, the highest the reward for a new competitor to get established. They have a few good years (for them) charging these prices, but it won't last.

The prices will never go back to normal because that's not how pricing works. Once its proven that consumers will pay the price, they will modulate supply to keep the price where it is. Why do more for less when they can do less for more.

We're fucked. It's not going to get better. Act accordingly.

Lenovo apparently ignoring China then

This could be a fomo tactic….

We have seen this story before. There will be a oversupply and then they will have to get rid of that inventory.

Don't doom too much about this headline. HBM contracts represent artificial AI demand. When the bubble pops (and it will pop), the HBM demand evaporates and it's back to competing for consumers. That said, there will be a very slow ratchet to get back to consumer-competitive prices, because as component costs go down, additional companies will be "priced in" to speculative AI business models, even if hyperscalers and other AI-drunk multinationals are backing off.

Regardless of whether there is a bubble, though, AI spending is ludicriously, unsustainably inflated even from existing memory customers. They are purchasing one-time AI infrastructure that needs to last a decade to even have a remote chance of paying off the hardware investments. There are only a few companies that can afford current AI pricing, those companies have already played their hands and paid for allocations, and they will not keep purchasing at this pace even in their own best case scenarios.

Regulation could keep consumer prices down, but of course we're in the bad Trump timeline and that won't happen until at least 2028. Assuming the bubble pops before then, the key to resetting this "new normal" is to NOT purchase anything you do not need to until we're back to $80-130 / 64GB or cheaper, like it was in 2025. Hold out, make them desperate to lower prices.

This is relevant for all prices. If Amazon sees you will pay 3x for toilet paper or whatever, what’s the incentive to charge you less?

We've seen with other industries that the prices never come back down once they've gone up.

That said, expensive RAM kits (and a lot of tech in general) are not exactly a mandatory purchase for many people like food is. Those that can stop buying expensive electronics certainly will once the price is too high.

Grocery companies price gouge and shrinkflate because their customers don't really have a choice other than to starve. What are tech companies going to do when customers go an increasing amount of years between purchases?

I'll stick to chess and keep my humble elderly gaming laptop for another 40 years with Linux