Chen Qihong, chairman of Qisda Group, said that the current industry, except for artificial intelligence (AI) related fields, in fact, the overall market performance is not as good as expected, and has even experienced a "terrible" wave of...
Chen Qihong, chairman of Qisda Group, said that the current industry, except for artificial intelligence (AI) related fields, in fact, the overall market performance is not as good as expected, and has even experienced a "terrible" wave of DDR4 shortages of memory. It is expected that this wave of memory shortages may continue until 2026.
Chen Qihong told the media before attending the 5th Chengdu Electronics Forum hosted by his alma mater, National Cheng Kung University, that in the face of the current severe memory shortage dilemma, manufacturers must be forward-looking and make early arrangements. In particular, if the industry can realize the problem of material shortage early, it must make an appointment with the partner factory early and sign the contract as soon as possible. Some of the more powerful companies in the industry had even negotiated and signed a contract half a year ago. Even if the price had not yet been determined at that time, the other party must take it into consideration. And if you don't sign the contract in advance, you may not only face high prices, but you may even "not get something." If you don’t have a good relationship with your suppliers, you won’t even be able to get the goods.
Chen Qihong observed that the memory inventory in the past has now been quickly exhausted. He pointed out that the real situation for DDR4, which is now severely out of stock, is to "take it when it is available" because it cannot operate due to lack of products. As far as the current situation of our own company is concerned, the more obvious shortage is the supply and demand of the Switch network switch market. Although there are other products that use DDR4 memory, the main part is still the Switch market segment. In particular, the world's three major manufacturers focus on the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market, and all their production capacity is used for production. Insufficient DDR4 production capacity has caused market shortages and price increases. As a result, the inventory of the entire industry has been adjusted downwards, and everyone can only hurry up to get the goods.
Chen Qihong also emphasized that although the price of DDR4 is already higher than that of DDR5 due to shortages, it is impossible to replace the memory at once as the Switch design has predetermined specifications. However, the continuously rising price of DDR4 has also made it difficult for enterprises to bear, which has put certain pressure on costs.
