Feature Investigation: Are RAM prices dropping, or is it all illusion? The short answer is...no. A few months of high but flat prices, and a few small dips, don't signal a return to sanity for consumer-level memory and storage. , PDT OpenAI, the biggest kid on this particular playground, has cancelled its highly visible Sora video generation tool along with a billion-dollar Disney deal. Apparently it simply couldn’t be made profitable. Christoph Hoffmann So what’s with the flat prices, or even reduced prices? We aren’t out of this mess, but consumers could hope we’re reaching equilibrium at a “new normal,” with apologies if that term brings back some bad pandemic memories. At the very least, maybe we can plan out pricing for RAM and storage, and get used to a lower level of performance without a new case of sticker shock every week. Or not. Tom Mainelli, VP of Device & Consumer Research at IDC, agrees that price increases are slowing. “But it’s too early to say they’ve peaked,” he told me. “Because of the shortage, some SKUs saw pricing rise above what the market would support. In those cases, we sometimes see a pause or even some reversal. However, we are still far from normalization, and the supply crunch is ongoing.”That possibility had occurred to me before I put out a call for analyst . “Scalper” is an unpleasant term, but the immutable laws of the market make it a familiar one for PC builders, who are always aware of those who buy in-demand, high-performance parts to try and turn them around for a quick buck. Scalpers were all over GPUs during the shortages in the pandemic and the crypto boom, and they’re always a possibility when a new product launches. (Just ask anyone who collects Magic: The Gathering cards, and watch them wince.) Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry If scalpers — both independent and those that operate stores on third-party markets like Amazon and Newegg — got a little too greedy during the supply crunch, then had to adjust their prices back down, it would explain a short reversal without a full return to more sane prices. Dave Altavilla, principal analyst at HotTech and the founder of HotHardware, had a similar answer. “What we’re seeing right now is a classic inventory and demand elasticity effect layered on top of a structurally tight market.” In layman’s terms, supply and demand. “…Some recent price softness appears tied to localized inventory pressure in distribution channels, particularly in secondary markets, rather than a broad easing of supply constraints.” Altavilla also pointed to softening consumer demand in response to higher prices, and smoothed-out purchases from OEMs. Which brings us to the topic of manufacturers. Prices on PCs and other electronics are still going up, up, up Indeed, if you look at the market for finished devices, the big manufacturers don’t seem to be anticipating a return to normality anytime soon. Microsoft, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Motorola, all of them are either raising prices on existing devices (a shocking buck of historical trends) or announcing new systems with much higher prices than we might expect. The only outlier is Apple, with its smash hit MacBook Neo. With just 8GB of RAM and a repurposed iPhone processor in the $600 laptop, Apple is uniquely positioned to take advantage of unprecedented consumer strain and trepidation. The situation is so bad that Framework, poorly insulated from market swings as a smaller manufacturer, issued a defiant rallying cry last week…but it
