Team Group's Chen Qingwen: Memory prices continue to rise with a significant DRAM shortage; supply will be tightest in the first half of 2027.

Team Group general manager Chen Qingwen stated that supply in the memory market remains persistently tight, and prices will continue to rise in the fourth quarter, though the pace of increase will moderate compared with the past eight to nine months. Specifically, price gains will shift from a sharp monthly rise of 15% to 20% to a pace of roughly 20% to 30% per quarter. He stressed that the current market problem is not that prices are too high, but that supply is not that plentiful. On the supply side, capacity at memory original manufacturers has already been largely locked up by long-term contracts, and the pace of expansion at new plants cannot keep up with demand. Taking Micron's MegaFab as an example, the first production line will not come online until the fourth quarter of 2027 at the earliest, while orders for 2028 and 2029 have already been fully booked. Chen Qingwen also revealed that the industry has recently been receiving notices from upstream original manufacturers, clearly conveying that supply released in 2027 will tighten sharply, and that capacity from original manufacturers for 2027-2028 is almost entirely booked. On the demand side, he believes DRAM demand is currently more solid than NAND Flash, and the DRAM shortage is very obvious and massive; although NAND Flash also has a shortage, it is relatively less severe. He expects the truly severe shortage to hit in the first half of 2027, when the volume of goods available externally will be very small.