Samsung warns RAM shortage will last until 2028 and worsen in 2027

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Samsung tells analysts global memory supply shortage will persist through 2028 and grow more severe in 2027 than in 2026

This while posting its third consecutive record quarter: ₩171.5 trillion in revenue, ₩89.5 trillion in operating profit, and a 52% operating margin

Samsung is locking 60 to 70% of capacity into five-year supply agreements with price floors

Samsung has told analysts it believes the memory shortage now squeezing everything from server racks to gaming PCs is unlikely to ease before 2028, and that conditions will get worse before they get better.

Speaking on its Q2 2026 earnings call, the world's largest DRAM manufacturer now expects supply constraints to be more severe in 2027 than they are in 2026.

The company said this while reporting the most profitable quarter in its history, with ₩171.5 trillion in revenue, ₩89.5 trillion in operating profit, and a 52% operating margin, all of which indicated healthy demand for its DRAM despite price hikes across the board.

An AI-centric problem that is not going away soon

As voracious demand for memory and storage from AI hyperscalers continues, Samsung is a key beneficiary of a shortage it expects to last for years, driven by long lead times and the capital intensity of adding capacity.

The argument Samsung made on its earnings call was arithmetic rather than speculative. B

uilding a new fab and getting it to wafer production takes more than three years, so the industry-wide capital expenditure increases now underway cannot translate into meaningful output within the forecast window. Unmet demand from this year rolls into next year, tightening things further.

Independent forecasting broadly agrees. TrendForce expects NAND supply to ease in the second half of 2027 as new capacity and higher-layer products arrive, but sees DRAM differently: several suppliers plan new lines for 2027, and construction, equipment installation and qualification will push meaningful ramp-up into the second half of that year, meaning substantial extra output does not arrive until 2028.

Samsung's own shipment figures show how tight things already are. DRAM bit shipments rose by low-teens percentages quarter on quarter, exceeding its own guidance, while average selling prices climbed by around 45% for DRAM and close to 70% for NAND in a single quarter.

Hedging against potential downsides

Buried in the analyst Q&A is a structural change that will outlast any particular price curve. Samsung is converting the memory business from a spot market into a contracted one.

The company said it plans to allocate roughly 60 to 70% of total capacity to long-term supply agreements. These run on five-year terms subject to annual renegotiation, effectively rolling forward.

It has already finalized deals with the top five global data center customers and is in final talks with five more, with substantial advance payments written in as a contractual requirement; Samsung says it has received about a quarter of that total so far. For mainstream products, the agreements also carry minimum price floors, set at levels the company describes as sufficient to cover its future investment risk.

The consequences reach retail. Gartner has forecast that combined DRAM and SSD price increases will lift average PC prices by 17% and push global PC shipments down by more than 10% , the steepest contraction in over a decade.

Micron retired its consumer Crucial brand in February 2026 to concentrate on enterprise AI customers, which is the clearest possible statement of where the industry's priorities sit despite whatever it says publicly about wanting to help consumers.

For Samsung's memory division, none of this is a problem. The price floors it has written into a majority of its capacity insulate it from the downside of the boom-and-bust cycle that DRAM markets are notorious for, and its own device businesses are absorbing the cost: mobile and networks posted a combined operating loss of ₩0.7 trillion for the quarter, and the display and TV units both flagged memory costs eating into profitability.

A company earning a mammoth ₩89.5 trillion in operating profit, thanks to a 52% operating margin, however, has little reason to move quickly on any of it.