Hopefully Chinese firms recognize the gap in the market and increase their capacity.
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They are scaling up but as with other things they will most likely scale to their inner market first, and then I doubt they'll subsidize a price depreciation to help westerners when they can get the profits for themselves
I'm in a pretty mercenary mindset about it these days TBH. I've got some money on the table, whoever can provide 32gb of RAM and three HDDs for my RAID at a price that's not ridiculous can have it.
The same Micron that plead guilty to price fixing of memory 20 years ago.
https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2004/02/27/memory-makers-hit-by-price-fixing-claims/1070959
Remember they are traitors to actual customers when the bubble burtsts.
They should fail, totally, and vanish from the world.
Traitors would mean they were ever on your side. Welcome to capitalism, bud. They've always been on the side of maximum profit, like all other corporations.
gross margin for Micron
Gross indeed. Fucking greedy scumbags
I wonder if anybody has told Micron about what happens when customers sign a contract but then declare bankruptcy shortly after.
Or what happens to the stock price once the temporary surge in demand fades or new companies enter the market and disrupt it.
"Locks in"...if all of a sudden there was no demand you can be assured they would "lock out". Micron likes to put the boot to the throat when they have an advantage. Not someone I'd do business with.
Yeah, everyone was paying to back out of their contracts as soon as the prices went through the roof. The customers will do the same when they come back down if they are stuck in these contracts.
Five years is too long for the buyers. The AI bubble will burst before then and then the market price will drop as the inflated demand disappears, especially if this continues long enough for more production capacity to come online.
They might not have had much of a choice in making the deal, though. Micron has been extracting the absolute maximum they can out of this situation. Make a deal or get nothing. Their clients will remember, though, and flag them as an unreliable supplier. Once this ends—and these always end—they’ll likely have a lower market share and end up having to cut prices.
Micron is optimistic in saying the demand won’t start easing until 2028. A lot of the rest of the technology manufacturing industry is about to grind to a crawl if not a halt because it’s nearly impossible to get components. Some companies are already delaying product launches and I think a lot more are about to this summer as they realize what’s happening. If non-AI businesses start to slow, the whole economy starts to slow, the AI demand will falter and that’s when the bubble bursts. I’m thinking maybe by the end of this year, more likely next year.
When the bubble bursts I’m guessing at least a couple of the companies Micron signed SCAs with will fold and Micron won’t get anything.
Interesting analysis. I was thinking the same, their customers might not make it.
About this point:
They might not have had much of a choice in making the deal, though. Micron has been extracting the absolute maximum they can out of this situation. Make a deal or get nothing. Their clients will remember, though, and flag them as an unreliable supplier.
Are the other two any better? If not Micron might get away with it. It doesn't strike me as a very competitive market.
Isn't that called price fixing, and is generally illegal?
its price fixing if the agreement is among 'competitors' - this is price fixing for a customer(s)
If there’s some collusion, sure, but you’d have to find a government body with the will and teeth to prosecute.
Nothing really against charging whatever you feel like outside of things like certain supplies during disasters. It’s shitty
Only if regulatory bodies do something about it.
Wouldn’t this just be selling security?
You would enter the SCA if you want to secure your supply chain against the risk of inflated pricing. The risk would now be overspending if the market drops. Comparing the two risk profiles, an organization might decide that they have more stomach for overpaying a set amount over 5 years. As opposed, of course, to the risk of paying an arbitrarily expensive amount indefinitely as the market remains volatile.
So now, while planning out the next 5 years of business objectives, you can plan against a much more solid best/worst case scenario. That minimized uncertainty, which lets the business keep moving even if at a more expense pace.
Yes, but the fine is far lower than their profits here... so, it's only illegal if you can't afford it.
"Cost of doing business"
This is just like selling / buying options in any other industry, e.g farming to buy something at a specified price in the future.
They've agreed to buy XYZ product at 123 time at a price between $100 and $200.
If prices plummet, they've still agreed to buy it at $100 (similar to selling a $100 Strike options PUT), but if prices skyrocket, they don't need to pay more than $200 (similar to buying a $200 Strike options CALL)
Anything in between is just the price, so if it's $150 then its just $150
It's not exactly the same as using options, but the rough idea.
Software developers: more Electron and bloated frameworks are what the people want! Running 10 independent browser instances for simple chat apps is a great idea!
Padme: “…and then they’ll drop, right?”
Well, I know who's gonna take a beating when the bubble pops and the market falls out from under them. What a stupid decision.
"Hey guys, this AI thing is gonna be like this forever. We'll never lack for insane demand ever again."
Soooo if you raise the price sooo high then it lowers the price of barriers to entry. Congrats on maybe a year of monopoly before memory becomes a commodity like corn. Or AI crashes so hard that your customers refuse to come back. I feel like the later since using Micron memory for the past 30~ years.
I'm not buying shit unless I have to. And then I'll likely buy used.
Does it go something like this? Those companies who buy the NAND chips to make AI accelerators, SSDs and RAM for data centers are the Microns customers, like Nvidia. Even if they are in trouble and know that the datacenters are not being built, they can't cancel the deals because that would call the bubble into question. They will have to take any markup deal that Micron gives, them because if they don't there will be nothing for them nor Micron anyway.
the barrier to entry for ddr can't be so high that someone can't buy a fab machine and undercut them can it?
It can.
is there any good reason to charge more? I remember a long time ago, the people who run youtube had to have new technology invented to be able to store the videos on there.
is anything like that happening with ram chips?