Samsung raising wholesale DRAM and SSD memory prices up to 80% as gap between consumer and enterprise products widened

Samsung has reportedly notified its distributors in Taiwan where the bulk of the world's laptops or gaming consoles are assembled that it will be raising the price of its memory products by up to 80%.

The move comes on top of already exorbitant consumer DRAM and SSD storage memory price hikes that have doubled and tripled since November. Over the last 90 days, for instance, the price of a Samsung 32GB DDR5 5600MHz laptop memory kit on Amazon has more than doubled with new highs yet to come. Ditto for the popular Samsung T7 1TB portable SSD whose price went from $99 to $199 in that same timeframe there.

According to one computer hardware semiconductor distributor in Korea, "Samsung Electronics' 5th generation double data rate (DDR5) DRAM 16GB-5600 memory module (DIMM) for PCs is being sold for over 400,000 won this month... it has nearly tripled in two months." Not only has Samsung raised wholesale consumer memory prices, but it also can't supply enough units to meet demand, with the distributor complaining that they can barely send 10 kits out a day.

"While it is true that Samsung Electronics memory supply prices have recently increased, the claim that all product prices have increased by 80% is not true," tipped one Samsung Electronics insider, tangentially confirming that further price increases on both memory and consumer electronicsc products are coming once laptop, phone, PlayStation, or other assemblers have to work with the newly priced components.

Industry insiders peg enterprise AI hardware demand and component supply shortage as the culprits behind Samsung's drastic wholesale price bump. Popular brands like Crucial have simply exited the consumer memory market to focus on the much lucrative AI data center buisness, while Nvidia is paying Samsung double for its next-gen HBM4 AI graphics card memory modules, for instance.

Consumer products typically don't have to sustain critical workload for prolonged periods of time, but enterprise RAM and flash memory storage kits require extra components of higher quality to ensure reliability. The price gap between the consumer and enterprise Samsung memory products, however, has reportedly now widened to a 40% record, This has reportedly left Samsung focused predominantly on the high-end market, resulting in wholesale consumer memory prices running rampant, too.