en.Wedoany.com Reported - Entering the second half of the year, multiple institutions predict further upside potential for average memory selling prices, while the market generally expects a potential industry-wide supply shortage by 2027.
The upward trend in the DRAM market remains solid. As of early July 2026, the quoted price for 16Gb DDR5 has reached approximately $47, hitting a record high. Bank of America (BofA) analyzed in its report that the expansion of AI computing demand and the ongoing shift of production capacity to HBM are the dual factors behind this situation. Meanwhile, major manufacturers are reducing DDR4 capacity while cooperating with downstream customers' inventory replenishment, driving DDR4 prices to also climb to the peak of this cycle.
The NAND flash memory sector also maintains a strong upward momentum. The contract price for 512Gb NAND wafers has now risen to about $25, far exceeding spot market prices. From the cyclical low of approximately $2.5 in February 2025, the cumulative increase has approached nearly 10 times.
Regarding future trends, research firm TrendForce has slightly lowered its forecast for the NAND average selling price (ASP) growth in the second quarter of 2026, adjusting it to 55% to 60%; however, it has also raised its expectations for the fourth quarter, projecting 10% to 15%. BofA's forecast model is similar but more conservative, estimating NAND ASP growth of about 65% in Q2 2026, about 13% in Q3, and about 1% in Q4.
From the demand side, the four major U.S. tech giants—Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta—are expected to see their combined capital expenditures increase by approximately 80% year-over-year in 2026, totaling around $700 billion. This trend will continue to strengthen the long-term demand for storage products in data centers. BofA has strong confidence in data growth over the next three to five years, believing that driven by cloud data uploads, the proliferation of AI training and inference applications, and emerging fields such as "physical AI," the global data volume measured in Exabytes is expected to grow at an annual rate exceeding 25%. This means storage demand will not be limited to AI training but will also expand to inference and edge computing scenarios, forming a more sustainable and broad demand base.
The BofA report also specifically highlighted SanDisk's explosive growth in enterprise SSD business, with related revenue surging sevenfold year-over-year. SanDisk is currently advancing a "high-bandwidth flash" technology aimed at achieving performance close to DRAM at a cost far lower than DRAM. This product is expected to gradually enter the market between late 2026 and 2027, potentially becoming a significant variable in the enterprise storage sector.
Overall, BofA's core assessment is that this memory cycle has not yet peaked. Driven by AI and data center demand, the industry is entering a structural upward channel, with the true supply-demand inflection point likely occurring further in the future.
Notably, Chinese memory manufacturers are accelerating their R&D efforts in DDR5 DRAM technology to meet the rapidly growing demand from AI, enterprise computing, and consumer electronics sectors. Their technological level is approaching that of the three global memory giants: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron. According to reports from Yin Technology, China's largest DRAM manufacturer, CXMT, is accelerating its DDR5 technology roadmap and has begun developing and mass-producing higher-specification DDR5 DRAM modules. Its latest DRAM modules have achieved a transfer speed of 8000MT/s, covering 16Gb and 24Gb chips. Meanwhile, 32Gb DRAM has also entered the consumer market, serving as a key driver for the upgrade of China's domestic storage industry.
