Drastic Forecasts from TrendForce: DRAM Prices to Rise by up to 63% in One Quarter, NAND by up to 75%

The memory market continues to register significant price tensions even in the second quarter of 2026. According to the latest analysis from TrendForce, the price of DRAM in supply contracts will see an increase between 58% and 63% on a quarterly basis, while the price of NAND Flash memory will reach growth between 70% and 75%. After an extreme first quarter, the dynamics indicate a slowdown in increases for DRAM, but a strong acceleration for NAND.

At the base of this scenario remains the reallocation of production capacity towards applications related to artificial intelligence, which continues to compress the supply aimed at traditional segments. Producers are indeed directing more resources towards high-margin solutions such as server memory and enterprise SSDs, inevitably reducing availability for PCs, smartphones, and consumer devices.

The server segment confirms its position as the main driver of demand. North American cloud providers are expanding the infrastructures dedicated to AI inference and purchasing significant volumes of high-capacity RDIMM modules through multi-year supply agreements. This allows suppliers to maintain high prices despite a significant drop in demand in the consumer segment.

Demand for DRAM for desktop PCs, Mini PCs, and laptops is indeed noticeably decreasing. However, DRAM suppliers are simply reducing supply to OEMs or module manufacturers and compensating for the reduction with increased demand in the enterprise sector. This, clearly, also reduces supply and exposes buyers to extremely high prices compared to the actual cost of production.

Regarding NAND memory, TrendForce forecasts that for the first time the price growth will surpass that of DRAM. On the other hand, naturally, the demand for enterprise SSDs follows the trends of system memory, with the enterprise sector continuing to absorb the majority of the supply. Moreover, it is the cloud operators who are "distorting" the market since, in order to be first in the AI race, they accept exorbitant costs and sign multi-quarter contracts to secure their supply.

Needless to say, the situation becomes even more critical in those segments with a reduced margin, namely that category of products for which demand was already confined to specific sectors. A concrete example is UFS and eMMC memories, which share production lines with SSDs. Producers have repurposed these lines, leaving numerous customers completely without supply for this type of memory. UFS and eMMC have recorded the greatest gap between demand and supply.

TrendForce concludes its analysis with anything but optimistic forecasts. According to the analysis institute, the crisis will continue for the next two years, with prices likely to keep rising. Only from the end of 2027 or early 2028 – barring delays – will the process of decline begin thanks to the commissioning of new production sites.