A YMTC employee says the memory shortage will last three more years, and TrendForce sees Q4 DRAM prices rising

An employee of the Chinese chipmaker YMTC told The Wire China on 4 October that the global memory shortage will last about three more years, roughly until late 2029. The remark was relayed by TweakTown the next day. In the same week, TrendForce said DRAM contract talks for the fourth quarter are pointing to price increases, according to DigitalToday.

For anyone planning to buy or build a PC, a laptop or a phone this winter, the practical reading is simple: do not wait for memory to get cheaper.

What was actually said

The three-year figure comes from one person who spoke to The Wire China anonymously. TweakTown notes that it is not an official YMTC forecast, and that the employee spoke about memory in general rather than NAND flash specifically. YMTC is also preparing a Shanghai IPO worth about 33 billion yuan (about $4.9 billion), according to TweakTown’s summary of the report, and the article points out that a company heading into a listing has reasons to talk up a long shortage.

The employee also said YMTC has raised chip prices and is shifting production toward higher-margin products. That matters because of where YMTC sits. Counterpoint Research puts it third in global NAND shipments in the second quarter, with a 14% share, and YMTC has told investors it wants to overtake Samsung and SK hynix by the end of 2027.

DigitalToday carries the same quote and adds a market reading: if a top-three NAND supplier raises prices and moves capacity to richer products, SSD prices could follow. No specific percentage or dollar increase is given in either article.

Why DRAM prices are heading up again

The DRAM side comes from TrendForce. DigitalToday reports that the research firm sees Q4 2026 contract negotiations pointing to increases, and quotes it as saying “DRAM supply is extremely tight.” It names demand from US cloud service providers as a driver, and says early talks with suppliers suggest the Q4 increases may be significant.

Contract prices are what memory makers charge PC and phone makers in bulk, and they move through to shelf prices with a delay. A rise agreed for the fourth quarter tends to show up in laptops, prebuilt desktops and SSDs a few weeks later rather than overnight.

Where the forecasts disagree

Not everyone agrees on the end date, and that is the useful part of this story. TweakTown reports that TrendForce expects NAND supply and demand to balance in the second half of 2027, partly because Chinese suppliers are adding output. DigitalToday says some in the market had expected a balance around the same time, and that the latest signals cast doubt on it. It also mentions speculation that the crunch could stretch to 2030.

The Micron chief executive, in TweakTown’s account, said he has no clear view of when supply and demand will return to balance. That is a more honest answer than either the three-year claim or the second-half-2027 one, since both depend on factories that have not finished building.

So there are three dates on the table: the second half of 2027 from TrendForce, late 2029 from an anonymous YMTC employee, and “unclear” from Micron’s CEO. Treat the earliest one as the optimistic case, not the plan.

What buyers can do

These are our reading of the reports, not advice from the sources.

• If you need a PC or SSD in the next few months, buying earlier is likely cheaper than buying later, given that Q4 contract prices are trending up.
• Lower-capacity configurations are the easiest place to save. Memory is a large part of the price of a laptop or phone, so a step down in RAM or storage helps more than it did a year ago.
• Expect fewer budget SSD deals. Counterpoint’s numbers show a Chinese supplier gaining share, but the same supplier is raising prices instead of cutting them.

What would change this picture: new capacity from YMTC and other makers arriving faster than planned, or AI server demand cooling. Neither has been reported. The next hard data point is the Q4 contract price figures TrendForce publishes once negotiations close, and whether retail prices for SSDs and RAM kits move in step.