The big memory manufacturers continue to print money at the expense of long-suffering buyers, with industry DRAM revenue approaching five times its level a year ago.
Demand for datacenter capacity and AI accelerators drove the 369 percent year-over-year surge in Q3 2026, Counterpoint Research reports.
"AI has turned memory from a commodity into a valuable scarce resource, and buyers are now competing for supply rather than negotiating on price. With prices still rising, suppliers are on track to set new earnings records again next quarter."
As readers will be well aware by now, the AI infrastructure boom has sent demand for server memory soaring. Manufacturers have prioritized more lucrative products for that market, squeezing supplies for PCs, smartphones, and other devices.
The consequences have been a sharp increase in memory costs, leading to higher prices of products that use it. The average price tag for a laptop or desktop was up by double-digit percentages across Europe this summer, resulting in falling PC shipments as vendors struggled to secure supplies and buyers were put off by the expense.
A similar effect has been seen in the smartphone arena, with shipments down by at least a fifth as rising memory costs squeezed budget models out of the market, leaving vendors to focus on high-end devices instead.
Price increases slowed from the steep rises seen in the first half of the year, Counterpoint says, but average DRAM selling prices still reached $1.90 per gigabit and remained the main driver of revenue growth.
Of the big three memory makers – the DRAMvirate, if you like – Samsung led with a 38 percent share of DRAM revenue. Separately, it forecast company-wide operating profit of about $80 billion for Q3, up from $9 billion a year earlier.
SK hynix posted stronger sequential growth, helping it recover some of the share it lost earlier this year, according to Counterpoint. The firm made a $62.8 billion profit, and predicts that memory shortages will persist until at least 2030.
Micron's DRAM revenue grew more slowly than rivals', but its wider business hardly suffered: fiscal fourth-quarter net profit reached $37.7 billion, exceeding its entire second-quarter revenue of $23.8 billion.
Counterpoint's research director MS Hwang expects to see memory prices remaining high next year.
"[High-bandwidth memory] prices, which lagged commodity DRAM this year, are now catching up. Long-term agreements (LTAs) are supporting prices, and supply will stay tight because major new fabs will not start production until 2028. LTA terms may cause results to differ between suppliers in the short term, but over time they should all follow the same upward trend," he says.
That means more bad news for buyers, but more massive profits for the memory makers. ®