Price Check Q3 2016: DRAM Prices Down Over 20% Since Early 2016

Slow sales in the first half of 2016 have negatively affected suppliers of virtually all of PCs, tablets and smartphone components. Producers of DRAM typically suffer more than others when it comes to pricing, since computer memory is considered a commodity and its quotes mostly depend on supply and demand rather than on technology advantages. Since early 2016, prices of DDR3 and DDR4 chips have declined by over 20%, according to DRAMeXchange (a division of TrendForce that tracks DRAM market). Despite the fact that it is slightly costlier to produce DDR4 memory because of slightly larger die sizes, at times the physical DDR4 modules can actually be cheaper than DDR3 ones.