Micron—one of the “big three” companies that manufacture the vast majority of memory on the planet—is shutting down its Crucial brand. This is the arm of the company that sells RAM and storage products directly to consumers. Instead, Micron is shifting its focus to the “AI” boom… the same situation that’s making memory explode in price all over the world. Consumers are, to use a technical term, pissed.
In a recent interview, a Micron vice president tried to downplay the situation, explaining that Micron is still technically supplying RAM and other memory products to consumers… by selling it to PC manufacturers.
“Our viewpoint is that we are trying to help consumers around the world,” said Christopher Moore, VP of Micron’s Marketing, Mobile and Client Business Unit, in an interview with Wccftech. “We’re just doing it through different channels. We still have a very sizable business in the client and mobile markets.” He continued: “We are also, of course, servicing our data center customers.”
The notion that Micron hasn’t completely abandoned consumers because it’s still supplying at least some PC manufacturers was one I heard at CES last week. It was similarly unconvincing there, too, as company after company refused to commit to pricing for forthcoming products, for fear of rising memory prices erasing their profit margins before release.
Those data center customers are the reason why RAM prices are skyrocketing: rapid, massive buildup for the “AI” industry is gobbling up most of the current and projected chip supply. Put aside the debate on whether LLM-powered businesses are in a bubble. Truth is, good old fashioned supply and demand is still in play, raising prices considerably on finished laptops and desktops and making DDR5 memory for consumers triple or even quadruple in price.
Micron—now making hay while the sun shines—is shuttering its Crucial brand at the end of January. This ends nearly 30 years of selling to consumers for PC building, repairs, and upgrades.
Foundry
“This is not a Micron issue, it’s an industry issue… and there’s just not enough supply to go around,” said Moore to Wccftech. It’s an echo of the statement Micron made in its announcement (e.g., it’s following the money). That’s certainly true, but I hasten to note that neither of Micron’s competition—Samsung and SK Hynix—have yet shuttered their direct-to-consumer memory and storage product lines. (That sound you hear is me knocking on the wood of my desk.)
If the first question asked at CES was “What are we going to do about the memory crunch?” and the answer was a big, disappointing shrug, then the next question was “When is it going to end?” I’ve heard estimates all over the place, ranging from 2027 up to 2032, as today’s developing data centers will still be sucking up chip supply into the next decade.
Moore is a little more optimistic than that, citing a new Micron manufacturing facility that will be finalized in 2027, according to an interview with PCWorld’s Mark Hachman. In just a few days, Micron is planning to break ground on a New York facility that’ll be the biggest semiconductor factory in the US.
But with 3 to 4 years of construction and fitting required for a new fabrication plant (on the low end), it’s still going to be a long, long time before expanded manufacturing capacity can start chipping away at the current supply crunch. That’s assuming the macroeconomic AI bubble doesn’t burst, of course. But if that happens, we’ll all have more problems than merely trying to afford a gaming desktop upgrade.