Recently, the memory chip market is no longer just experiencing price increases—it's a cutthroat slaughter.

Domestic major manufacturers are having a tough time. Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have nearly exhausted their inventories, generally lasting less than two months, with some only enough for three weeks. There's no choice but to pause procurement and wait. The upstream suppliers are even more aggressive; Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have recently announced another round of 50% price hikes, directly surpassing NVIDIA's increases.

Micron has been enjoying record profits this year. For the fiscal year 2025, net profit is expected to surpass $60 billion, a tenfold year-over-year surge, with stock prices tripling since April. The rise in storage products has been even more intense than precious metals: DDR4 8GB memory modules, which cost just over $200 at the beginning of the year, now start at four or five hundred; DDR5 is even more outrageous, tripling in price from original levels. All these costs will eventually be passed on to end consumers—smartphones, computers, tablets, smart home devices—any purchase will cost a few hundred to over a thousand more.

But what is the root cause of this surge? It's not mobile phone manufacturers playing hunger marketing; it's AI rapidly consuming storage. Storage chips are fundamentally data containers, and AI training and inference are bottomless pits, swallowing capacity that was originally allocated for consumer electronics and automotive sectors. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon alone plan to invest 2.8 trillion yuan on AI data centers next year; Alibaba will invest 380 billion yuan over three years. These projects rely entirely on storage chips, directly squeezing the share of traditional consumer markets.

What's more concerning is that this price increase isn't just a short-term fluctuation. SMIC has issued a warning: within the next year, automotive and mobile storage shortages will persist, and prices will continue rising into next year or even longer. Once inventories run out, new product prices will only go higher.

So if you're planning to upgrade your phone, build a new PC, set up a NAS, or develop a smart home, the next couple of years could see prices climbing the more you wait. The super cycle in the storage industry has already started, silently taking the first cut from everyone's wallets.