PC memory prices, which surged in the first half of this year, may partly pause their rise in the second half, a forecast showed. Asus expects additional price hikes to be limited to the single digits, and markets have also raised the possibility that SK Hynix could increase output of commodity DRAM.

According to IT outlet TechRadar on June 24, Asus said it had sharply raised prices for some products in Taiwan in the first half, but expects the pace of increases to slow noticeably in the second half.

Liao I-hsiang (랴오이샹), Asus general manager, said that as of May, prices for some products had risen about 30 percent from the fourth quarter of last year. He said component prices could continue to rise in the second half, but additional increases would likely remain at a single-digit level.

He cited stabilising prices for memory and storage devices as a backdrop. Liao said product cost pressures are easing as memory and storage costs have recently fallen. He added that with consumers front-loading purchases since the start of the year ahead of further increases, the market is in a situation where it is difficult to accept another sharp round of price hikes.

On the supply side, attention has focused on a possible shift in SK Hynix's production strategy. Markets are watching whether SK Hynix may partly moderate the pace of expanding high-bandwidth memory production and increase the share of commodity DRAM output. If the mix is adjusted, some HBM capacity could be shifted to consumer DDR5 memory, raising the possibility of easing shortages and upward price pressure.

Investor reaction was mixed. SK Hynix shares fell more than 12 percent and Samsung Electronics also slid about 12 percent as concerns spread that growth in AI memory could slow. Selling also continued across AI semiconductor-related shares. From a consumer perspective, expectations have emerged that memory prices could stabilise if expanded DDR5 supply materialises.

Even so, supply normalisation is expected to take more time. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (최태원) has previously forecast that a DRAM supply shortage could persist until 2030, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also recently expressed a similar view.

Markets have also raised the possibility that the production strategy change could be a production adjustment aimed at improving profitability amid rising DRAM prices, rather than a slowdown in AI memory demand.

AMD also offered an outlook for expanding memory supply early this month. David McAfee (데이비드 맥아피), corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU, said early this month that memory makers are rapidly expanding production capacity and new additions will be focused on next-generation memory such as DDR5, LPDDR and HBM. He said a significant expansion of DDR4 production is unlikely, but output capacity for new memory will rise in earnest from the end of 2027 through 2028.

This outlook alone does not mean the memory supply crunch is over. But with PC price increases that rose as much as about 30 percent in the first half now seen slowing to the single digits in the second half, and with the possibility of higher DDR5 output at SK Hynix, expectations are growing that the consumer memory market could at least take a breather.