In the past year, the global memory market has experienced an unprecedented "price storm". Affected by supply shortages and adjustments to production capacity allocation in the industrial chain, memory chip spot prices have been rising.Among them, the performance of DDR4 16Gb memory modules is the most astonishing, with an increase of 1800% since the end of 2024, setting a new market record in recent years.
According to data from DIGITIMES Research, DDR5 16Gb spot prices increased by more than 500% between the end of 2024 and December 2025, from US$4.6 to US$28;The price of DDR4 16Gb memory modules increased by 1800%, from about $3.20 to more than $62.
In December 2025, DDR5 16Gb spot prices increased by about 16% month-on-month, after increasing by as much as 50% in November, with the average price being approximately US$28 per strip.
At the same time, the prices of DDR4 16Gb and 8Gb memory modules continue to rise, with prices rising to approximately US$62 and over US$23 respectively in December, an increase of approximately 46% from November.
Although the increase in December was less than the 50%-60% peak in November, the overall upward trend continued.
The NAND flash memory market is not immune. In December 2025, the price of 512Gb flash memory wafers rose from US$5 in October to approximately US$11 in mid-December, a monthly increase of more than 20%.
Looking forward to 2026, the market predicts that memory prices will continue to rise. Affected by the continued imbalance between memory supply and demand, contract prices are expected to continue to rise in the first quarter of 2026, and the increase is expected to reach 30%-40%.
Among them, DDR5 RDIMM memory prices are expected to increase by more than 40%, and NAND flash memory prices are expected to increase by double-digit percentages.
The market expects that price growth will slow down in the second half of 2026, but the overall price will remain at a high level and will not fall significantly.
