Samsung has sold most of its 2027 memory. PC buyers will feel it
Key takeaways
- Samsung told investors on 30 July that its long-term deals run at least five years and cover 60 to 70 percent of future capacity
- A Digitimes report on 12 October puts the 2027 figure as high as 80 percent, which we could not confirm in full
- Samsung expects shortages to deepen in 2027 and carry into 2028
- Samsung's mobile division posted its first quarterly loss, a sign of how memory costs hit gadgets
If you have been waiting for RAM and SSD prices to settle before upgrading, Samsung's latest figures suggest they will not settle soon.
On its 30 July earnings call, Jaejune Kim, executive vice president of Samsung's memory business, said the company has signed long-term supply agreements with the five largest data centre operators and is close to finalising deals with five more. The contracts run for at least five years and cover roughly 60 to 70 percent of future capacity, with upfront payments and floor pricing baked in. A Digitimes report on 12 October, citing the Korea Economic Daily, goes further and says 75 to 80 percent of Samsung's 2027 supply, including HBM, is already committed to long-term agreements. Samsung has not confirmed that figure, so treat it as a report rather than a fact.
Why this matters for ordinary buyers
Memory is not a spot market when most of it is pre-sold. If the biggest buyers have booked the output years ahead, what is left for phone makers, laptop brands and the retail shelf is thinner and more expensive. Kim said shortages will likely deepen in 2027 and run into 2028, because AI demand keeps outrunning production.
The numbers show who is winning. Samsung's chip division made an operating profit of 89.2 trillion won (about 61.7 billion US dollars) in the second quarter, up more than 250 times from a year earlier. Its mobile division, the part that makes Galaxy phones, lost 700 billion won, its first quarterly loss. As Josh Gilbert, an analyst at eToro, put it, the chips enriching one side of Samsung are now hurting the other.
What to do about it
Nobody can time a memory market, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But the direction is clear enough to plan around.
If you are building or upgrading a desktop in the next six months, a 32GB DDR5 kit is the sensible floor now, and waiting for a price drop looks like a bet against the whole industry. If you are buying a phone or laptop, expect memory to be one of the reasons prices creep up, and look hard at the base storage tier before paying extra for the next one. For a fast, reliable drive, the Samsung 990 PRO 2TB is still a safe pick.
Samsung expects the constraints to persist for years. New capacity is slow to arrive: Samsung's Taylor, Texas fab is due to start operating this year, but a second facility is not expected to reach mass production until 2030.
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