Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
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Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#2Also worth noting that Apple recently paid a king’s ransom for Samsung RAM
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#3Meanwhile Apple iPhone sales were up 23% YoY end of last year. It'll likely be a good year for Apple, with a little more room in margin to make some plays, and a lottt of cash.
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#4Lest we forget, this memory shortage was deliberately engineered [1]. Thanks, OpenAI.
[1]: https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#5The DRAM shortage and lack of fab capacity have also caused the Playstation 6 to slip to 2029 or so.[1] Game consoles are vulnerable. They need a lot of RAM and have to sell at a moderate price.
The IDC article says that DRAM prices are not expected to come down again. "While memory prices are projected to stabilize by mid-2027, they are unlikely to return to previous level — making the sub-$100 segment (171 million devices) permanently uneconomical." Before, they always came back down in the next RAM glut, when everybody built too much capacity. Why is that not going to happen next time?
[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Storage-crisis-Playstation-6-co...
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#6Also worth noting that Apple recently paid a king’s ransom for Samsung RAM
King's ransom or market price?
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#7I recently upgraded from the Pixel 7 to the 10. Nothing but regret - the phone isn't worse, but it's not better either, and I had to reinstall everything. Why did I do this?
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#8Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!).
A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the problem.
I also wonder what this means for smartphone-esque devices like the Switch 2. If this goes on long enough I won't be surprised if they release a 'lite' model with less RAM/Storage and bifurcate their console capabilities, worse than what they did with 3DS > 2DS .
Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#9Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage
#10Maybe an upside? These past years it feels like meaningful hardware spec bumps are on the horizon, like in the 90s, 2010s.
After all this churn subsides there is a chance entry level Windows laptops will start at 32GB RAM and maybe 8-12GB VRAM?
Which could end up being about 5-10-15 years of progress packed into 2-3-4.