Storage products see a new round of price increases? Micron Technology (MU.US) suspends quoting.

As AI extends from training to inference and edge devices, the demand for large-capacity storage continues to rise, causing supply to tighten. According to supply chain sources cited by the Taiwan Economic Daily, Micron's (MU.US) senior management has observed a major supply shortage based on customer demand forecasts. As a result, the company has decided to urgently suspend all product quotations and re-adjust subsequent prices. It is reported that Micron has notified customers that quotations for storage products such as DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR4, and LPDDR5 have been suspended for a week, and prices for these products may be adjusted upwards by 20%-30%. Not only consumer and industrial storage products are affected, but the price increase for automotive electronic products is expected to reach 70%. Industry analysts believe that Micron's move indicates a structural change in the demand for large-capacity storage products amid the rapid rise of AI inference, leading to a significant increase in product demand. Earlier, NAND flash manufacturer SanDisk announced a 10% price increase for all consumer products in April, followed by a further 10% price increase across all channels last week. The company stated that strong demand for NAND flash products is driven by the increasing storage needs in AI applications, data centers, clients, and mobile environments. The company plans to continue conducting regular price evaluations and may make further adjustments in the coming quarters. The price increases by SanDisk and Micron are not due to cost pressure, but are a response to the strong downstream demand. From a demand perspective, AI applications are driving storage needs in data centers, clients, and mobile environments; from a supply perspective, the industry is facing shortages as NAND manufacturers shift production to the next generation nodes, resulting in scarcity of low-density chips. Additionally, some suppliers may struggle to expand production due to financial difficulties. The article predicts that the price increase trend is an inevitable result of the revival of the storage industry: supply-demand balance drives price recovery, technological iteration reshapes product value, and AI and edge computing give rise to new industry demands. In recent years, leading manufacturers have voluntarily reduced production, while demand from the downstream consumer sector has gradually recovered. The rapid growth of AI and data center demands has led to price differentiation and dynamic pricing becoming normal. Technologically, NAND is iterating towards ultra-high-layer stacking, while DRAM is moving towards high-bandwidth directions like HBM, with interface standards continuously upgrading, driving continuous increase in product value. At the application level, storage has become the core of AI infrastructure, leading to strong demand in areas such as hierarchical storage and trustworthy storage. In terms of competition, international giants dominate pricing power, while Chinese manufacturers accelerate domestic substitution and coexistence, shifting the industry from traditional "scale competition" to "technological depth competition." This article is reprinted from "Financial Association"; GMTEight editor: Wang Qiujia.