Samsung Electronics is considering lowering the price of its memory chips in the second half of 2022, aiming to further expand its market share, according to industry sources cited by the media. If Samsung decides to cut prices, other memory chip companies will follow suit and spark a price war in the second half of this year, the sources said.

Micron previously sharply lowered its earnings target in its fiscal fourth-quarter outlook. Micron Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said that weak end demand in the consumer market, including personal computers (PCs) and smartphones, is significantly dragging down demand in the global memory industry.

Micron said that end demand in the consumer market as well as in the data center sector is weak and some enterprise OEM customers intend to reduce their memory inventories.

According to the latest research by TrendForce, despite the rapid weakening of overall consumer demand in the first half of this year, the previous strong bargaining power of DRAM OEMs did not show signs of price cuts for sales, causing inventory pressure to gradually shift from the buyer to the seller side.

According to TrendForce, in the second half of the year, when demand is uncertain, some DRAM suppliers have already started to have clear intentions to reduce prices, especially in the server sector where demand is relatively stable, in order to de-stabilize inventory pressure. If the subsequent situation triggers the original manufacturers to bid down the price to sell, the drop may exceed 10%.