Report Paints Depressing Sales Numbers For DRAM Makers

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The Bankruptcy of Elpida still carries the hope that balance in supply and demand will return in the DRAM industry.

However, GBI Research believes that the DRAM industry is caught up in a "vicious cycle" that forces full production volume to pay for past expenses, but results in oversupply that kills pricing.

In 2010, DRAM makers recorded revenues of $37.31 billion, and only $29.47 billion in 2011. For 2012, the researchers project only $29 billion. At the same time, smartphones and tablets promote a scenario where unit numbers are exploding, but capacities are shrinking. In 2010, 16.39 billion units were shipped. In 2012, the number will be almost double - 32 million devices.

To curb falling prices, DRAMeXchange reported that DRAM makers will be forced to cut their production as prices are forecast to further decline in August - after a dramatic 7 percent. A 2 Gb DDR3 chip currently sells for $1.08.

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Wolfgang Gruener
26 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blingooron
    Im not sure how these sales numbers break up into consumer sales, however im not buying it cause I dont need more than 8 gig and the difference today in ram is really splitting hairs (for performance) and not giving me 50% faster load times or helping my fps. So...no buy!
    Reply
  • Chainzsaw
    Hmm maybe it's a good time to re-introduce RDRAM into mainstream.



    /joke
    Reply
  • blingooron
    Rambus...feel sorry for those poor souls (from a consumer gaming pov)
    Reply
  • g00fysmiley
    release a new standard with a signifigant performance boost and they will sell, also if they can convince oem to include more ram sales might improve... but most us in the pc market have ddr3 comign out our ears it has been around for a whiel i have a few unused sticks just in with old motherboards from upgrades but having 16 gigs in each machine ther eis no need to buy more no gain betyon even 8 gigs in most machines
    Reply
  • badhomaks
    "In 2010, 16.39 billion units were shipped. In 2012, the number will be almost double - 32 million devices." Daum, a whole -200% increase.
    Reply
  • leongrado
    g00fysmileyrelease a new standard with a signifigant performance boost and they will sell, also if they can convince oem to include more ram sales might improve... but most us in the pc market have ddr3 comign out our ears it has been around for a whiel i have a few unused sticks just in with old motherboards from upgrades but having 16 gigs in each machine ther eis no need to buy more no gain betyon even 8 gigs in most machines
    Definitely. Seems like the main determining factor right now for memory is simply how much you have. If they actually introduce let's say DDR4 that has a maybe 25% performance boost then we might see people upgrading.
    Reply
  • freggo
    badhomaks"In 2010, 16.39 billion units were shipped. In 2012, the number will be almost double - 32 million devices." Daum, a whole -200% increase.
    not to be picky but that's a 100% increase :-)

    Reply
  • hannibal
    Well Intel is pringing DDR4 to CPU after the Haswell (If not counting Haswell-ep), so it will not help dram makers at this moment. Allso it is true that ram speed has not been very bad bottlenek, so it would reguire much, much faster CPU to reguire much faster ram... Summasumarum ram makers are in trouble.
    Reply
  • twelch82
    Maybe they should band together to start a software company that makes voxel modeling and rendering software. That would get people needing more RAM. You could use up a terabyte pretty easily for that matter.
    Reply
  • applegetsmelaid
    Looks like they are in need of the new Prozac DDR3 2800 (PC3 22400) Hexachannel RAM.
    Reply