Samsung Electronics said that the tight memory supply situation that is currently driving up the prices of many types of electronic products may be difficult to alleviate in the short term and may even worsen next year. According to reports from Reuters and Samsung's earnings conference call, this severe memory shortage is mainly driven by the surge in demand for AI data centers, and its impact has expanded from mobile phones to handheld consoles and other consumer electronics categories.
In an earnings call held on Thursday local time, Samsung clearly expected that this memory shortage will not only last until next year, but the supply and demand gap will also risk continuing to expand. Samsung's memory chip business executive Kim Jae-jun said at the meeting that the company's current supply lags far behind customer demand. Judging from the current demand for 2027 alone, the gap between supply and demand in 2027 will be further widened than in 2026.
This judgment echoes industry news earlier this month. Previous reports have stated that the world's major RAM manufacturers may not have a chance to catch up with market demand until around 2030, showing that this round of memory shortage is not a short-term fluctuation, but more like a structural pressure that lasts for many years.
At the same time, Samsung also faces potential disruptions on the production side. The report mentioned that if Samsung and the union cannot reach an agreement, its chip supply situation may be further put under pressure, because the union plans to launch an 18-day strike starting on May 21.
From the perspective of market impact, insufficient memory supply is continuing to push up terminal hardware costs, and may continue to be transmitted to the consumer electronics industry chain in the future. Against the background of unabated AI infrastructure construction and uncertainty on the manufacturing side, the tense situation in the global memory market still seems to be far from over.