Micron Cuts DRAM and NAND Flash Output as ASP Falters

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Micron has revealed plans to cut production of its DRAM and NAND flash products by 5% to combat its average selling price (ASP) falling by 20% in the quarter ended February 28, 2019. Oversupply in both sectors led to the sharp fall in pricing and was "worse-than-expected DRAM and NAND pricing." Micron DRAM revenues experienced a "decrease 30% sequentially and 28% from a year earlier to account for 64% of its total revenues in the second quarter of its fiscal 2019." Micron's NAND revenue slid "18% sequentially and 2% on year to account for 30% of company revenues in the fiscal second-quarter 2019. ASPs went down about 25% from the first quarter." Micron expects revenues to drop another 17% in fiscal Q3 2019. Micron bought back 21 million shares of its common stock. Thanks workshop35 !

Looking into the fiscal third-quarter 2019, Micron expects revenues to register another sequential drop of about 17% to US$4.6-5 billion, with gross margin sliding to 37-40% from 50% in the prior quarter. "Micron continues to execute well across a range of product, operational and financial initiatives against the backdrop of a challenging market environment," said Micron president and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. "These initiatives and our focus on high-value solutions, cost competitiveness and innovation will enable us to emerge even stronger as the market environment improves."
 
Cartels be cartellin.

Even with the drops in price, RAM is still too expensive based on where it should be.

With the expectation that prices for tech keep dropping over time, today assembled DDR4 modules should cost consumers no more than $3-$4 per GB.

The memory cartel and their gangster tactics are dispicable.
 
The issue is that dram and flash was being stockpiled by OEMs and system builders as the price was going up. They now have an inventory that needs to be worked through before they will start buying large quantities again. This isnt a permanent cut and I dont think its going to jack prices up. If they didnt increase production again later samsung and hynix would eat up their market share
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Cartels be cartellin.

Even with the drops in price, RAM is still too expensive based on where it should be.

With the expectation that prices for tech keep dropping over time, today assembled DDR4 modules should cost consumers no more than $3-$4 per GB.

The memory cartel and their gangster tactics are dispicable.
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Isn't it great how these companies build these billion dollar factories in the most disaster prone of areas...

"Oh no Shin Chan dropped a water bottle on the fab controller keyboard... time to run a Monsoon "Flood" damage press release!"
 
That's the RAM/SSD cartel for you. Be it as it may, I haven't bought any of Micron's second rate products at least since 2016, don't use any of their SSDs or RAM, and I definitively do not resell or recommend their shit to any of my customers. If I'm going to overpay for RAM or SSDs, then I want to buy some quality at the very least.

So...

Dear Micron, kindly go fuck yourself.
 
Not that didnt make a killing last year. Same cycle happens they get fined for price fixxing then prices drop. Then go insanely priced.
 
Night_Hawk-19 said:
Not that didnt make a killing last year. Same cycle happens they get fined for price fixxing then prices drop. Then go insanely priced.
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Micron makes the most money out of all 3 big RAM manufacturers because the also own Crucial. Yet they makes the lowest quality RAM and SSD chips. Go figure...
 
When I start my multinational corporation, I'm going to place ethical practices and consumers' smiles above profit on the goals list - a list that I shall display upon the refrigerator in the employee lounge. I will no doubt have to utilize a magnet of some sort, but I leave that to R&D.
 
viivo said:
When I start my multinational corporation, I'm going to place ethical practices and consumers' smiles above profit on the goals list - a list that I shall display upon the refrigerator in the employee lounge. I will no doubt have to utilize a magnet of some sort, but I leave that to R&D.
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Of course you will. And then when the board fires you because shareholders think you’re not maximizing their investment and giving them the highest ROI possible, you can stick that magnet on your refrigerator at home. (Of course, I do think you’re being sarcastic but just in case... :) )
 
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euskalzabe said:
I get it... but somewhere along the line it seems that they're doing it not because they're losing money, but because they're not increasing profits by limiting production.
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None of this is illegal and companies do stuff like this frequently. When their two competitors follow suit or a conveniently timed flood/earthquake/typhoon hits and RAM prices skyrocket, then you might have a collusion case.
 
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Chunder said:
Gotta love modern day, and vastly unregulated, capitalism.
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It's not Capitalism when a few large DRAM/NAND manufacturing conglomerates have been allowed to purchase all the small competitors through government approvals, leaving the field a collusion-filled wasteland so that they can get away with pulling shit like this. This is government sponsored statist *corporatism* at its finest.

If you want capitalism, then start your own DRAM manufacturing venture and challenge them.
 
DejaWiz said:
It's not Capitalism when a few large DRAM/NAND manufacturing conglomerates have been allowed to purchase all the small competitors through government approvals, leaving the field a collusion-filled wasteland so that they can get away with pulling shit like this. This is government sponsored statist *corporatism* at its finest.

If you want capitalism, then start your own DRAM manufacturing venture and challenge them.
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Would it be fair to call them the "NANDRAM Cartel"?
 
DejaWiz said:
I like it! Or the DRAM NAND Cartel. The DNC for short!
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Yes, but...

static.politico.com.jpg
 
STEM said:
Micron makes the most money out of all 3 big RAM manufacturers because the also own Crucial. Yet they makes the lowest quality RAM and SSD chips. Go figure...
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Yet, I've had no problems with Crucial SSD's or ram products over the years.
Only SSD I've even had die was a SanDisk, and I've only had 2 of them.

I've purchased and installed several dozen Crucial SSD's over the past few years, and have never had a failure.
Same with Samsung, never had a failure.

Out of the countless Crucial memory I've bought of the years, I only remember 1 memory stick going bad, a 1GB DDR stick, and that was after years of use.
 
The definition of "cartel":
an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition
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So...

I guess this should work as a logo, what do you think?

nadram-cartel-hardforum-logo.png
 
PenGunn said:
How is it illegal? I'm not getting that part. If profits go down on an item, dialing back on production makes sense.

I do understand price manipulation can be a crime, but it does not have to be.
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Very clever, announce the cuts loudly to get your oligopolist buddies at Samsung and SK Hynix to do the same.

A criminal act would be to actually have a meeting to plan cuts, this is the sneaky bitch way to get around that problem.
 
RealBeast said:
Very clever, announce the cuts loudly to get your oligopolist buddies at Samsung and SK Hynix to do the same.

A criminal act would be to actually have a meeting to plan cuts, this is the sneaky bitch way to get around that problem.
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Trow some upper management people in prison for 3 to 5 years, it'll be very sobering for the entire NANDRAM cartel.
 
Fuuck this. I'm going to bump my main rig up to 64GB now while the bumpin's good. It's just as we started seeing reasonably good deals (hell, even at Best Buy in store of all places - particularly on Crucial RGB 3000mhz stuff). For my main machine, I think I need to return the 4x8 Corsair RGB's and buy 4 x 16's of the same. Or sell the 4x8s on the forums.

My Hackintosh has 2x16 on an ITX board, but is ghetto - I actually used successfully at 2400MT, albeit with some legit voltage increase but still under spec limit, a cheap-o Amazon SODIMM-to-DIMM adapter to allow me to use the 2x16GB DDR4 kit I bought for my laptop instead In my desktop since nobody wanted them on the forum (sigh). Basically a DIMM PCB with an SODIMM socket in the center. I was rather floored when I got it to POST and moreso when the voltage got it stable.

I'm going to buy and keep at least a system's worth of decent DDR4 on hand in case I need it and the price fixing assholes cause another surge. Oh no, you only made a measly several Billion this earnings period. Must be hard to underpay your employees and keep the lights on. /s
 
I'm pretty much waiting until DDR5 to buy more RAM also. The prices aren't worth it right now (on top of needing to slow the RAM down when maxing out all 4 slots on a Ryzen board).

Micron is a shitty American-based company too. Had issues with my RTX 2080 which had Micron RAM. I had read awhile back that others had the same experience.

Upgraded to an RTX 2080TI with Samsung RAM and it runs like a champ with no issue. Same with my RAM which is running Samsung B-Die.
 
iDShaDoW said:
I'm pretty much waiting until DDR5 to buy more RAM also. The prices aren't worth it right now (on top of needing to slow the RAM down when maxing out all 4 slots on a Ryzen board).

Micron is a shitty American-based company too. Had issues with my RTX 2080 which had Micron RAM. I had read awhile back that others had the same experience.

Upgraded to an RTX 2080TI with Samsung RAM and it runs like a champ with no issue. Same with my RAM which is running Samsung B-Die.
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With Ryzen, it's a more speed sensitive situation. The differences on Intel beyond about 2400MT and above are negligible in actual benchmarks outside raw RAM R/W. That really tells me we aren't really bottlenecked much by DDR4, if Intel were kind, they'd go quad channel IMC on a lot of SKUs we're likely to buy, and give us enough time with DDR4 where it'd be awhile before we actually benefit/"need" DDR5.

Every time a memory generation roll out happens, the new gen is absurdly expensive and timings on first offerings are so sloppy they offer par or worse performance than previous gen.

Used to be Crucial/Micron was a top tier outfit. They probably should have stuck to RAM instead of branching into consumer SSD's and such.
 
I've had both DDR1 and DDR2 kits from Crucial fail, both from the Ballistix line. While my RMAs were painless, this all predated the financial crisis, whereafter companies got exceptionally cheap with their end user support. Sometimes embarrassingly so. And as mentioned by Shadow, Micron's reputation with the last few GPU generations has not been so rosy either lmao.

It is kind of disheartening to see, but with a far enough horizon (e.g. 15+ years), you see many companies make mistakes like this.
 
Mav451 said:
I've had both DDR1 and DDR2 kits from Crucial fail, both from the Ballistix line. While my RMAs were painless, this all predated the financial crisis, whereafter companies got exceptionally cheap with their end user support. Sometimes embarrassingly so. And as mentioned by Shadow, Micron's reputation with the last few GPU generations has not been so rosy either lmao.

It is kind of disheartening to see, but with a far enough horizon (e.g. 15+ years), you see many companies make mistakes like this.
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Maybe that's the difference.
I'm not buying their consumer "Performance" brands, I'm buying the regular standard speed memory for various Dell laptops/desktop.

I almost always buy Crucial because they are cheaper than Dell memory and I haven't had problems.
Just upgraded a number of laptops to 32GB to support the new larger VM's we are running.
 
Mav451 said:
I've had both DDR1 and DDR2 kits from Crucial fail, both from the Ballistix line. While my RMAs were painless, this all predated the financial crisis, whereafter companies got exceptionally cheap with their end user support. Sometimes embarrassingly so. And as mentioned by Shadow, Micron's reputation with the last few GPU generations has not been so rosy either lmao.

It is kind of disheartening to see, but with a far enough horizon (e.g. 15+ years), you see many companies make mistakes like this.
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I still have a few DDR2 dead Ballistix sticks here, the yellow ones, from like 10+ years ago. The reason memory fails is simply that it "skips" proper Q&A. It's the memory chips that should have never left the factory. I also had cheap G.Skill and Corsair RAM fail on me. The difference is that their high-end kits like Dominator Platinum or TridentZ never failed on me. It's just higher quality, properly tested RAM. And I'm not talking out of my behind, I'm actually one of those people who uses Thaiphoon Burner to see what kind of memory chips I'm running.

nutzo said:
Maybe that's the difference.
I'm not buying their consumer "Performance" brands, I'm buying the regular standard speed memory for various Dell laptops/desktop.
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Makes no difference. Crucial doesn't really push any of their RAM. Their higher speed offerings use the same exact DRAM chips as their budget kits, the only difference being the higher timings so they can crank up the speed and the voltage set to 1.35V instead of 1.2V. That much shouldn't kill any kind of DDR4 memory unless it was never working right in the first place. So, the only explanation that I have is that Micron is selling their lesser quality DRAM mixed in with the rest. Instead of binning and testing it properly, they just sell it as is. This isn't about saving money, it's about greed.
 
STEM said:
Micron makes the most money out of all 3 big RAM manufacturers because the also own Crucial. Yet they makes the lowest quality RAM and SSD chips.
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>forgetting hynix exists while simultaneously citing them

thinking emoji
 
__hollywood|meow said:
>forgetting hynix exists while simultaneously citing them

thinking emoji
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Maybe I was wrong while I most likely fat-fingered a few keystrokes here and there. What I was thinking though is that Micron is the only memory manufacturer who is also selling directly to consumers. Because of that, it is very likely that they enjoy the highest profit margins out of all memory manufacturers. Again, maybe I'm wrong.
 
STEM said:
Maybe I was wrong while I most likely fat-fingered a few keystrokes here and there. What I was thinking though is that Micron is the only memory manufacturer who is also selling directly to consumers. Because of that, it is very likely that they enjoy the highest profit margins out of all memory manufacturers. Again, maybe I'm wrong.
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Micron has the smallest market share of the big 3 for dram, and I'm pretty sure they aren't top 3 for nand either. Doesn't samsung sell directly to consumers as well?
 
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