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Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

investors.micron.com

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Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#201

Post by Aurornis »

venturecruelty wrote: post #69
walterbell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should countries have a upper limit on the ratio of server:client memory supply chain capacity? If no one can buy client hardware to access the cloud, how would cloud providers survive after driving their customers to extinction? It shouldn't be possible for one holding company (OpenAI) to silently buy all available memory wafer capacity from Samsung and SK Hynix, before the rest of civilization even has the opportun…

We can prevent this from happening by enforcing 100-year-old antitrust laws.

What do you think antitrust laws are going to do? Force Micron to continue producing consumer DIMMs in a heavily commoditized market? Stop server builders from building servers? Stop companies from building data centers around the globe?

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#202

Post by robotresearcher »

freetime2 wrote: post #7

Crucial was always a brand that I associated with quality, and I used their memory to upgrade several MacBooks back when it was still possible to upgrade the memory on MacBooks. That being said, the only SSD I’ve ever had fail on me was from Crucial. In recent builds I have been using less expensive memory from other companies with varying degrees of brand recognizability, and never had a problem. And the days of bei…

My most memorable RAM upgrade was adding 512KB to an Atari ST in 1988. Had to suck the solder out of 16x(16+2) factory flow-soldered through-holes, then solder in the 16 individual RAM chips and their decoupling capacitors. I was a teenager and hadn’t soldered before. I had no one to show me how, so I got a book from the library with pictures.

Was a huge relief that the machine come up successfully. But then it would lock up when it got warm, until I found the dodgy joint.

Was a very stressful afternoon, but a confidence builder!

I bet there are many people whose sole experience inside a computer is popping in some DIMMs. I’ll be kinda sad if those days are also gone. On the other hand, super integrated packages like Apple’s M-series make for really well-performing computers.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#203

Post by khhu2bnn »

Aurornis wrote: post #184
linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

It’s never been easier to be a hobbyist or a small electronics company. Honestly I don’t know what you’re talking about. Micron is exiting this business because it’s a commodity. It’s everywhere. There are numerous companies producing parts in this space. Their investments are better spent on other things. > I wonder if it's possible even for a company to make even 1980s-era electronics without massive capital expend…

> Micron is exiting this business because it’s a commodity. It’s everywhere. There are numerous companies producing parts in this space. Their investments are better spent on other things.

Numerous as in plenty? Or basically three? Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron make up over 90% of the market share of DRAM. Micron saying goodbye to the consumer market basically leaves us with yet another duopoly.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#204

Post by ghaff »

hibikir wrote: post #200
mh- wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where you live. Anecdotally, this is the opposite to the experience of everyone I know.

In many cities in the US, there's Microcenter, where you can walk out with every part you need. We also still have smaller stores that can build clones for you/hand you the boxes, but they don't quite have the same variety of parts.

Microcenter is one of the very few local DIY stores remaining. Best Buy has some stuff like hard drives but, even in the Boston area, I can't think of many other examples at this point.

Of course, you have Newegg and other online stores.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#205

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

Animats wrote: post #10

Wow. They're not selling off the business, they're totally exiting it. This is a big loss. Crucial offered a supply chain direct from Micron. Most other consumer DRAM sources pass through middlemen, where fake parts and re-labeled rejects can be inserted.

Yep. I've followed Micron since before Y2k. I've seen the ups and downs of their stock. Seen a CEO literally crash and burn (RIP).

This is a mistake. The consumer business is a bet , which they excel at. Yes, its not printing money right now, but it is an option. Exiting the consumer business will mean they may miss insights into the next hot consumer trend.

The game for large companies like this should be to keep small bets going and literally, just survive. That's what Micron was doing, that's what NVIDIA did for a better part of a decade. Now that both are printing money.

Yet, Micron has decided its retiring from placing more bets. Mistake.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#206

Post by forgotoldacc »

indemnity wrote: post #141
thewebguyd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hope its just a blip, but I don't actually think it is. The democratization of technology was something that had the power to break down class barriers. Anyone could go get cheap, off the shelf hardware, a book, and write useful software & sell it. It became a way to take back the means of production. Computing being accessible and affordable for everyone = working class power. That is why its backsliding. Tho…

Arguably Google and others like them would not even exist without access to cheap off the shelf hardware in their early days.

Definitely. And there's a tendency for individuals and particularly corporations to pull up the ladder behind them. They know that leaving things accessible means they could face major competition 5 years down the road. So they do what they can to prevent that.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#207

Post by tehlike »

dawnerd wrote: post #143
UncleOxidant wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering if we're going to have a situation in the future where we end up having to buy the hand-me-downs from industry after they're done with them (and thus kind of outdated tech)? Kind of seems like the days of building your own PC are numbered.

Honestly, it's actually pretty awesome the deals you can get on used enterprise gear.

At the cost of power consumption. My small homelab is already at 600Ws which is around 290$/mo in california.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#208

Post by dchftcs »

khhu2bnn wrote: post #203
Aurornis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s never been easier to be a hobbyist or a small electronics company. Honestly I don’t know what you’re talking about. Micron is exiting this business because it’s a commodity. It’s everywhere. There are numerous companies producing parts in this space. Their investments are better spent on other things. > I wonder if it's possible even for a company to make even 1980s-era electronics without massive capital expend…

> Micron is exiting this business because it’s a commodity. It’s everywhere. There are numerous companies producing parts in this space. Their investments are better spent on other things. Numerous as in plenty? Or basically three? Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron make up over 90% of the market share of DRAM. Micron saying goodbye to the consumer market basically leaves us with yet another duopoly.

Micron cuts off the business because there is a much more profitable place to deploy their capacity. The real reason Micron has a resource crunch that forces them to exit a steady business is that enterprise now places a huge premium on things didn't use to be that important.

This massive tide floats all boats and there will be smaller players filling the gap. With slightly worse chips at first yes, but historically DRAM had been a cyclical businesss where new manufacturing capabilities were brought online en masse after a boom.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#209

Post by walterbell »

Aurornis wrote: post #190
walterbell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should countries have a upper limit on the ratio of server:client memory supply chain capacity? If no one can buy client hardware to access the cloud, how would cloud providers survive after driving their customers to extinction? It shouldn't be possible for one holding company (OpenAI) to silently buy all available memory wafer capacity from Samsung and SK Hynix, before the rest of civilization even has the opportun…

> Should countries have an upper limit on the ratio of server:client memory supply chain capacity? If no one can buy client hardware to access the cloud, how would cloud providers survive after driving their customers to extinction? You mean a central planning, command and control economy? There is a lot of history of countries trying these things and they don’t have the outcome you want. DRAM manufacturing is a glob…

> DRAM manufacturers don’t list a price and then let OpenAI buy it all up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46143535

  Had Samsung known SK Hynix was about to commit a similar chunk of supply — or vice-versa — the pricing and terms would have likely been different. It’s entirely conceivable they wouldn’t have both agreed to supply such a substantial part of global supply if they had known more...but at the end of the day - OpenAI did succeed in keeping the circles tight, locking down the NDAs, and leveraging the fact that these companies assumed the other wasn’t giving up this much wafer volume simultaneously…in order to make a surgical strike on the global RAM supply chain..
https://thememoryguy.com/some-clarity-on-2025s-ddr4-price-su...

  The Chinese government directed CXMT to convert production from DDR4 to DDR5 as soon as the company was able.  The order was said to have been given in the 4th quarter of 2024, and the price transition changed from a decrease to an increase in the middle of March 2025.. A wholesale conversion from DDR4 to DDR5 would probably be very expensive to perform, and would thus be unusual for a company that was focused on profitability.  As a government-owned company, CXMT does not need to consistently turn a profit, and this was a factor in the government’s decision to suddenly switch from DDR4 to DDR5.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#210

Post by dastbe »

jmward01 wrote: post #197
zarzavat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a brand. They can start it up again later if enterprise demand falls.

I hear the cries of a thousand people in marketing right now. Building a brand takes time. I could see this if they were thinking they needed to re-invent the brand and to help with that they were strategically taking a break but that seems like a stretch.

my expectation is that they would either sell crucial RAM at such a low volume and/or such a high price that it would do more damage to the brand than sunsetting it and returning to it when the slowdown occurs.
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