Key points
- Acer's CEO says the memory shortage will not last to 2030
- He says suppliers are protecting margins
- His forecast still calls for higher PC prices before a 2027 decline
Acer chief executive Jason Chen does not think the memory shortage will last to the end of the decade. He says the biggest memory makers are overstating the problem to keep prices and margins high.
Chen named Samsung, SK Hynix (SKHY) and Micron (MU). He said tight supply is limited to high-end memory, including LPDDR5X-9600, while mainstream DRAM and SSD supply remains ample. Tom's Hardware reported his remarks on Monday, following an earlier report on Sunday by the Taiwan trade publication DigiTimes.
Chen's accusation was direct. He said suppliers want to keep margins high for as long as possible, "so they keep putting out the message: let me tell you, prices won't come down until the year 20-whatever." Some industry forecasts put the shortage's end closer to 2030 or later.
Chen is not predicting an immediate drop in PC prices. He expects them to rise another 5% to 20% by year-end, level off in the first half of 2027 and then begin to fall. His view is that changes in memory pricing take a few months to reach consumers.
Why Chen expects prices to fall
Chen's answer is China. He said lower-cost memory from Chinese manufacturers will disrupt the market, and that Acer, HP and Asus have begun using chips from CXMT. CXMT, China's largest DRAM maker, said this month that its fifth-generation DRAM is in mass production.
Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, has raised the same concern from the supplier side: Chinese capacity could eventually pressure memory prices.
The suppliers see a longer squeeze
Chen's view runs against the memory industry's prevailing forecast. SK Hynix has said 2027 could be the worst year of the shortage and that pricing may not normalize until around 2030. Adata's chief has said the DRAM shortage could last another decade. Apacer's chief has warned that DRAM available to module makers could drop by more than 70% in 2027 as HBM and server memory for AI take up more capacity.
AIStockWire has reported that view as the base case, including the argument that memory is the real bottleneck for AI. Chen is a major customer arguing against his suppliers' outlook. The market will decide which side is right.
Shares were mixed in midday trading. Micron traded around $1,041, up about 2.5% from Friday's close. SK Hynix's U.S.-listed shares were about flat, while SanDisk (SNDK) fell about 2%. Intraday prices can change before the close.
