'Our demand fulfillment rate is now at a record low' says Samsung as it makes its DRAM 90% more expensive than the previous quarter
There are two very different worlds out there. One is the world that you and I live in, the world of the consumer, where we scrape together whatever scraps of expensive memory we can find after the rest has been handed off to AI datacentres. The other is the world of chipmakers and shareholders, where supply that can't keep up with demand is a good thing because, well, more profits. Case in point comes from Samsung's latest earnings call.
The world's largest memory maker is, it seems, doing very well despite what it says is "record low" demand fulfilment:
"We also have very tight inventory and available supply is far short of customer demand. In fact, our demand fulfillment rate is now at a record low. And unlike previous years, customers who are concerned about supply shortages are actually bringing forward their demand for 2027 already.
So currently, just based on prebooked demand alone, the supply-demand gap is looking to widen further in 2027 versus this year."
In other words, Samsung simply doesn't have the capacity to make enough chips for even the customers it already has prebooked through 2027. That's just how vast the AI industry's appetite is for memory, which is the primary cause of the RAMpocalypse.
When it comes to the most important thing of all, though—moolah—Samsung seems to be doing just fine. The company says, "Our blended ASP rose by low 90% range Q-on-Q for DRAM, high 80% Q-on-Q for NAND."
Parsing that into non-investor lingo, it's Samsung saying that, compared to the previous quarter, it started to sell its chips, on average, 90% higher when it comes to the memory you find in RAM and 80% higher when it comes to the memory you find in SSDs. To simplify even further: 'We're making a lot more money.'
All this being said, Samsung isn't immune to supply issues, and it's not as if having less supply itself is a good thing. As much demand for as much supply as you can muster is the goal, and on the supply front, war in the Middle East could cause a problem. Samsung says there are "no supply chain issues to date" on that front, but nothing is certain.