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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

#221

Post by 0manrho »

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.

That's not how it works.

Crucial winding down doesn't mean that there's less flash fabs in the world, just like there are plenty of DRAM companies that sell to the consumer market that don't have their own flash fabs (Corsair, Gskill, Geil, etc). Those consumer oriented brands bought flash from Micron (not crucial), SK (also doesn't have a consumer facing DRAM brand), and Samsung. That's just as true today as it will be post Feb 2026 when Crucial closes it's doors because Micron selling components to say, Corsair, is an Enterprise transaction from Micron's perspective (B2B), even if the ultimate end product is a consumer oriented one.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#222

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

robotresearcher wrote: post #202
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…

Huh... I did that, too :)

And before that I duct-taped the insanely large 16KB RAM extension (from 1KB), so it doesn't reset with the slightest movement, on my Sinclair ZX81, which I've also assembled and soldered from a kit :)

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#223

Post by 0manrho »

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.

What is there to sell? The brand itself has value I guess, but that "Direct Access" goes out the door the second they sell it, so there's no value specifically in that to anyone else.

Crucial is primarily a Marketing and Support company, they didn't really make anything although there was a small engineering team that did DIMM/Module binning, but mostly contracted out heatsinks to glue to Micron DIMMs. On the SSD side of things, they used Phison controllers with Micron flash, just like pretty much any other consumer SSD that isn't Samsung or SK/Solidigm.

Corsair, Gskill, Geil, etc don't buy components from Crucial, they get them Micron. Crucial closing their doors has no bearing on that as far as we can tell.

They probably considered dumping it on some Private Equity firm or something, but likely decided to keep the IP in case they decide to resurrect it in the future should the market landscape change.

It sucks that they're winding down crucial, but it makes sense. Frankly I'm surprised they didn't pull the trigger sooner, and by sooner I mean years sooner.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#224

Post by thescriptkiddie »

sgnelson wrote: post #93

I feel like the "democratization of technology" is on the back slide. For the longest time, we had more and more access to high end technology at very reasonable price points. Now it feels like if you're not Facebook, Google, OpenAI, etc. etc. computation isn't for you. I hope this is just a blip, but I think there is a trend over the past few years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgADKpMStts

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#225

Post by walterbell »

mikestorrent wrote: post #131
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…

What if we realize that 8 GB of memory is actually a tremendous amount, and experience a resurgence in desktop operating systems as people begin to prioritize memory for productive computation again instead of using up a gigabyte for a chat client?

Phones are already memory constrained and affected by artificial NAND shortage, it's not specific to one form factor.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#226

Post by e2le »

echelon wrote: post #152
venturecruelty wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is just supply and demand. Antitrust laws can/should be applied to, eg., Google for search and web monopolization. If someone is willing to pay more than you for a limited supply of some resource, that isn't a market monopoly.

Allowing one sector of the economy to starve out investment in others is unlikely to be something without consequences.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#227

Post by 0manrho »

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…

That's because the SSD business was little more than a carbon copy of most other consumer non Samsung or SK/Solidigm brands. They've been phison controller with some cheap NAND flash with a different coat of paint for generations now, or in the case of the portable/external ones, that plus a 3rd party enclosure and IO module that they'd contracted out. In terms of hardware, this sub-business-unit was no more "Micron" than Corsair is (Support may be a different story). Enterprise SSD's and Consumer ones diverged years ago, and today are about as different from one another as GPU's are from CPU's.

The only real difference between Crucial RAM and Micron's unbuffered RAM was which brand's sticker they put on it, with some binning and QA on the higher-end enthusiast SKU's and a heatsink. This sub-business-unit was almost entirely redundant to Micron.

> And the days of being able to easily swap memory modules seem numbered, anyway.

I keep seeing people say this in threads across platforms discussing this news, and it baffles me. Why?

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#228

Post by conradev »

mh- wrote: post #176
tharkun__ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience. I've been able to go to a local store to buy PC components for more than 35 years now and last did to upgrade the RAM in the laptop to be eligible for Win11. Online only was not cheaper and local store had it available same day. Local store does have online presence and is a chain tho. Mouse replacement on a weekend coz old one broke same story (button smashed in and not usable at all any longer).…

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

Best Buy sells PC parts and accessories nationally in their stores, even though the selection is not great.

I walked into a Central Computers the other day and was flabbergasted. I had never seen a Threadripper PRO or a 10G switch in a store before!

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#229

Post by 0manrho »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #17

What a disaster for Micron. Having a consumer facing brand is 'crucial' for brand awareness. Micron is the smallest of the big 3 in DRAM and the only one in America. They're going to be swallowed up and replaced by CXMT.

Considering how many people don't realize Crucial is a Micron brand, or that Micron components are in a lot of non-crucial consumer brand products, I'd argue it wasn't that crucial.

Especially considering that there's little innovation in the consumer DRAM and SSD spaces vs their enterprise counterparts that Micron can flex their talent in.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#230

Post by iamnothere »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #31
palmotea wrote: post #5

When richer people than you want things, those things can become unavailable to you (or at least less available). I really hope this bubble pops, all these investors lose their shirts, and prices come down to something reasonable.

When it eventually does, they'll just come up with something else. Nvidia got a taste of inflated prices from the Crypto and then AI, and they're not going to just let that go. If nothing exists they'll make something and hype it endlessly to try to keep this going.

Better hope it’s not something like potable water. Not even joking.
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