this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

we'll have to wait till they ramp up production capacity before prices start dropping

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 8 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

Why would they undercut prices by more than necessary? They are still running a business.

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

They might not want to, in the end. It's just that right now there's no choice. Their productive capacity is not that huge, so its not like they can flood the market.

In the future they might develop an aggressive marketing strategy where they try to wrest as much market share as possible from the memory oligopoly. They also might not. The only more or less concrete thing to add is that the chinese market does have a history of letting 'one thousand flowers bloom' and then culling the worst performers. So I guess what we should watch for isn't one Chinese Company doing its thing, but multiple.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

But it's really enough to undercut prices by <10% and have consistent quality and supply.

People don't have as strong feelings about the brand of their RAM compared to CPU/GPU. PC vendors don't even write the RAM brand on the spec sheet.

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The thing is that AI expenditure is so irrational that the traditional monopolies are leaving the consumer goods market entirely. It's up in the air as to if new players from China even need to undercut competitors. What if Micron just goes full in on AI for another year, year and a half? What if Nvidia does the same? If west aligned players all just hand over the markets to someone else, that someone else might as well just undercut 1% past import dues.

The article raised the matter of quality but for all intents and purposes already put to rest. It's besides the real point, which is quantity and the time/money needed to get these fabs up and running.

[–] space_comrade@hexbear.net 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

One reason would be the foreign market's distrust of Chinese electronics, I'd imagine there'd be a period of cheap prices followed by raising prices to whatever the market value is at the time. Overall they'll still probably drop the prices long term.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 6 points 8 hours ago

It's selling out at comparable prices though.

Honestly the prices I can't find aren't even cheaper than Samsung or Kingston. Maybe it's cheaper to buy from China if you live in Australia than in Europe.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The answer is economies of scale. Look at solar panels and EVs as two recent examples.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Sure but solar panel demand is very unlikely to collapse in a few years. RAM demand has ~doubled, but that might be very temporary. We might see buyers going back on their existing purchases too. Massively increasing capacity under the assumption that you can sell at similar to current prices is self-destructive.

Of course the Chinese government should cover the risk to at least the extend of fulfilling Chinese demand.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Not really seeing any evidence for solar panel demand collapsing. China is still far away from phasing out fossils, and places like Africa will have a huge amount of demand as they continue to develop.

And I expect, the demand for RAM to only keep growing because it'll be used for data centers, robotics, and consumer devices which are just starting to take off in China. And again, all of this stuff will be exported to the Global South. The model will have to be low margins and large volumes because incomes in the developing countries are still relatively low.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Not what I've said. Solar panel demand won't collapse, RAM demand will

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 7 hours ago

And I've just explained why it won't. The electricity from solar panels will be used to power computing devices that use RAM.