Micron recently ann
ounced that it will shut down its Crucial consumer memory brand next year. This means that it will no longer manufacture RAM and SSD storage components for direct sale to consumers.
However, Micron will still manufacture these components for computer manufacturers, but said that it will only be able to meet half to two-thirds of the market demand for them.
Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron's CEO and chairman, expects the supply constraints of memory chips for consumer devices to persist even after 2026, from DDR4 to DDR5 and GDDR6 and GDDR7 due to demand and willingness of AI companies and AI component developers to buy them at prices much higher than the market.
Micron also recently reported that it recorded a total revenue of $13.64 billion in its latest fiscal quarter, which is a 57 percent increase compared to the same quarter the previous year. This is thanks to the sale of memory chips to AI technology companies and data center companies that buy them at inflated prices.
Micron's revenue is also seen increasing due to sales of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) memory which is also showing a sharp increase in demand. It is expected that the total addressable market that will buy HBM memory will increase to $100 billion by 2028.
The closure of Crucial does not seem to help the situation for consumers looking to buy or build new computers, with other memory companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix also seeing very sharp increases in component prices, with computer and smart device brands likely to introduce low-memory offerings in the future.