DRAM and NAND Price Rises Moderate in Q3 2026
Memory contract price increases are moderating in the current quarter after a year of unprecedented rises, with TrendForce forecasting conventional DRAM contract prices up 13% to 18% quarter over quarter in the third quarter of 2026 and NAND Flash up 10% to 15%.
The deceleration is real but the base is extreme. Conventional DRAM contract prices rose 90% to 95% quarter over quarter in the first quarter of 2026, then a further 58% to 63% in the second. NAND Flash rose 55% to 60% and then 70% to 75% across the same two quarters.
TrendForce attributes the slowdown to affordability rather than easing supply. Contract prices have reached record highs, and buyers in PC and smartphone markets have reached the limit of what they will absorb. The DRAM market itself remains, in TrendForce's description, extremely tight.
The underlying cause has not changed. Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU), Samsung Electronics Co. (KRX: 005930) and SK Hynix Inc. continue reallocating wafer capacity toward high bandwidth memory for AI accelerators. HBM uses advanced packaging and consumes substantially more manufacturing resource per gigabyte than conventional DRAM, so each wafer moved reduces conventional output by more than a straight swap would suggest.
NAND demand is being driven by AI inference and large scale data centre deployment rather than consumer devices. Vendors are directing capacity toward enterprise SSDs, though shortages of internally sourced DRAM continue to constrain supply of small capacity, high performance enterprise drives.
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