Will Memory Chips for consumers become expensive in 2026?

A few weeks back, there was news about Micron. The news stated that it will stop selling Crucial-branded consumer products. These include RAM, SSDs, and other consumer memory/storage. This change will occur by the end of its fiscal Q2, i.e., February 2026. But, the company will still honor warranties and support for existing Crucial products. It will also continue to supply enterprise-grade memory/storage under the “Micron” brand to commercial and data-center customers globally.

The World’s Top Memory Manufacturers

This news was trending across the world tech media. The reason is simple. The biggest Memory manufacturers are Samsung Electronics, recognized as the World’s Largest Memory Maker. They are followed by SK Hynix and then Micron Technology. These are only three companies that dominate the global DRAM market. There are memory manufacturers such as Kioxia (Japan), formerly known as Toshiba Memory. Western Digital (SanDisk) provides NAND via JV. YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies) and CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) are based in China. There are many other well-known brands in the market that source from the above companies.

Why Did Micron Decide to Stop Selling Crucial-Branded Consumer Products?

The demand for memory-based products, such as Cloud, laptops, and smartphones, has been on the rise. The total memory market has been rising continuously since 2015. The graph shows global memory bit shipments in exabytes. It also displays the consumer share of those bits from 2015 to 2025. You can see the overall growth of memory shipments. Consumer memory increased almost similarly until 2023. Then the consumer memory shipment began to decline through 2025 and may fall further in 2026.

The graph was created using AI to create an illustrative, sourced estimate. It includes a chart showing global shipments of memory bits (exabytes). The chart also shows the consumer share of those bits from 2015–2025. The numbers are estimates. They are based on public industry trend reports (TrendForce/Omdia/news summaries). This is because exact, publicly available year-by-year consumer-only figures are not published. It is a combination of reported bit-growth trends and market commentary to construct a consistent series for visualisation. Sources include TrendForce, Omdia, Tom’s Hardware, The Verge and industry reports.

The chart shows total memory bits (NAND + DRAM) growing strongly over the decade. However, the consumer share (%) falls. This means more bits are going to enterprise/AI uses even as total capacity increases. The raw table used to create the chart is displayed in the interactive table titled “Estimated Consumer Memory Supply (2015-2025)”

The Global Rise of AI

Let us go back a little further, to 2012 to 2016, which we call the Foundation Era. Here, profound learning breakthroughs in search, Image recognition, and speech processing. But it had limited awareness and minimal impact on consumer hardware markets.

2017 to 2019: Enterprise and Cloud Adoption

It was the time for enterprise and cloud adoption. The big players, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and social media platforms, began working on AI. GPUs (Nvidia) begin scaling for AI training, and memory demand increases.

2021: The Acceleration Phase

This time was the acceleration phase. If you remember, this was during COVID. There was growth in cloud computing and automation. AI-assisted analytics expanded significantly. Large language models (LLMs) improved rapidly. Infrastructure investment increased quietly.

2022 to 2023: Global Breakthrough

This was the time for Global Breakthrough (Critical Point). This is when ChatGPT launches (Nov 2022). Generative AI goes mainstream. Enterprises rush to build AI data centres and secure GPUs, DRAM, HBM, and NAND. The Governments and regulators responded with massive capital spending. By now, AI has become a global economic and geopolitical priority.

2024–2025: Infrastructure and Memory Dominance

The importance of Infrastructure & Memory Dominance was emphasized. Globally, AI data centres have increased multiple-fold. The AI data centres consumed huge DRAM capacities, HBM (High-Bandwidth Memory), and Enterprise SSDs, and investments are still ongoing.

Consumers were using more memory in cloud services because of the above factor. Smartphone memory space increased from a basic 64GB to at least 256 GB. So consumer products like USB drives, SD cards, and dual OTG drives. Even in laptops, memory has increased to at least 512GB.

The newer laptops are sleek and light. They already come with onboard storage. These storage options are not easily replaceable with DDRAM or SSD NVMe drives. Except for Gaming laptops, which are still available for upgrade options. Now, let’s consider Desktops and CPUs. Both consumers and office users are purchasing ready-to-use products. These products come from brands with OEM offerings.

There have been three top memory manufacturers. Micron is one of them. They are also OEMs for many brands that sell over-the-counter consumer memory products.

The Simple Economics of Demand vs. Supply

Micron memories are still in demand, but demand for AI memory has increased, outpacing growth in consumer demand. Enterprise products’ margins exceeded consumer margins by multiples. So Memory allocation became a strategic decision, not just volume-driven.

Micron’s exit from “Crucial” consumer memory is a delayed strategic reaction. This is due to AI’s infrastructure boom starting in 2022–2023. It is also due to long-term contracts locking in supply elsewhere. Last we have heard, Micron will support the “Crucial” brand until February 2026. They will continue producing as OEM products. Some products still have the Micron name.

My Opinion

Micron’s decision to stop using the “Crucial” brand will create a short-term void among brand loyalists. It will also affect the memory market. Still, it presents a gain for other brands to sell to consumers. This change also influences the prices of consumer memory products. Prices rise if different brands can’t fill the gap during this period. The demand for memory products will continue to increase. Factors like AI Computing contribute to this growth. Cloud-based servers and consumer-based office network servers also play a role. Upgrades and technological advancements, like AI, will keep manufacturers busy producing memory-based products. Still, the truth is that there will be a further decline in some of the consumer range of memory products. Consumers already get the required storage space and computing chips in their devices. They also obtain these from cloud-based platforms and servers.

Production Shortages and Western Export Controls

There is another reason for the price increase in memory. It is due to a shortage of chips produced in China. According to the recent report, Chinese manufacturers are unable to meet market demand. Despite heavy investment and rapid expansion plans, China still produces far fewer chips than it needs. This is particularly true for its massive consumption market. The issue is more pronounced in advanced technologies like AI, CPUs, GPUs, and high-end memory. The contributing factors of less production include technology gaps. There is less access to the most advanced manufacturing tools like EUV lithography. There are also talent shortages in semiconductor engineering and production. Complex design workflows need specialized EDA tools and systems that China still depends on foreign partners for.

Another major factor is the Western export controls, primarily from the U.S. and allied countries. These controls restrict China’s access to many cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing tools and software. This limits China’s ability to scale highest-end production, even as its chip consumption keeps rising.

Chinese chipmaker SMIC and others are warning of memory shortages. These shortages hit consumer products like phones and cars in 2026. It’s tied to global allocation of memory capacity to AI/data centres, and Chinese companies feel the squeeze too. AI consumes enormous amounts of memory. As a result, high-performance memory is prioritized. Meanwhile, “Legacy” memory, used in PCs, phones, and consumer SSDs, receives a smaller share of production.

In Summary

Global chip supply stays tight in 2026 as AI demand absorbs advanced memory capacity. China produces fewer chips than it needs due to technology gaps and export controls. Consumer RAM and SSD prices will stay elevated, with manufacturers prioritising AI, servers, and enterprise markets.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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