MediaTek is 'cautiously optimistic' that discrete memory pricing will look less gloomy during 2026
The memory supply crisis—spurred at least in part by the AI industry's endless appetite for DRAM and SSDs—has made consumer prices look extremely gloomy. Still, fabless semiconductor company MediaTek is "cautiously optimistic" that things might start to look a little more optimistic for discrete memory pricing come the second half of 2026.
To be clear, MediaTek as a company isn't exactly hurting in this landscape. According to Counterpoint Research, the company saw a 15% year on year growth in 2025 alone. Strong performance from the company's mobile flagship products (such as its 5G SoC) resulted in record revenue of $19.1 billion by the end of the year. Still, there are challenges, as corporate SVP and Head of Global Sales Eric Fischer recently told Counterpoint Research.
"From a capacity perspective, we're getting everything we need," Fischer says, "From the pricing perspective, [that's] a little bit more challenging—that tends to, most of the time, change on a quarterly basis. But I think our partners are trying to be as fair as they can. But most importantly is capacity—if you don't have capacity, you can't ship, and if our customers can't get product, they can't ship."
Fischer admits that on the discrete memory side (i.e, chips that only handle memory/storage, and not Mediatek's aforementioned 'system on a chip' products for smartphones), that's even more tricky. "We're seeing a lot of companies, a lot of our OEM partners that are raising their prices of their products, whether it's in mobile or consumer goods or client PCs," he reflects, "We do expect a slowdown in that, you know, probably in the second half."
MediaTek's SVP argues that, while prices for consumer memory will continue to rise throughout the first half of 2026 due to strong demand (PC shipments have actually gone up outside of the Americas, despite the RAMpocalypse), there will come a point where something has to give. He says, "We're super cautious, maybe cautiously optimistic about the second half, about where it goes because, at some point the prices are going to have an impact on the consumer's ability to spend—whether it's notebooks or [other] consumer products."
In other words, memory may become too expensive even for folks with especially deep pockets, hurting businesses' bottom line and incentivising a drop in prices. 'It's gonna get worse before it gets better,' isn't necessarily what anyone wants to hear, but still, it's what I've long suspected, given the outsized demand.
Wisely, as a fabless company, MediaTek "locked up capacity agreements" with key partners such as TSMC well in advance of the current supply crisis. However, even Fischer admits that capacity will be a challenge the company will have to reckon with in 2027.
Just for a start, TSMC is sold out until 2028, with even its next-gen Arizona fab fully booked before it has even been built. Memory manufacturer Micron has plenty of fresh fabs in the works, though many of these projects won't "support meaningful product shipments" until the back-end of 2027 at the earliest. Similarly, SK Hynix and Samsung are also tooling up but it probably won't help DRAM prices until 2028, if then.