Team Group CEO warns memory crisis could reach point where 'even money can't buy goods' — will get worse next year, with 'no downward trend in price whatsoever'

Team Group CEO Chen Ching-wen said during the company’s November 2 earnings call that the memory chip shortage is expected to become worse from the end of 2026 until the end of 2027. BigGo Finance quoted Chen as saying that there is “no downward price trend whatsoever,” and that some purchasers could face a scenario “even money can’t buy goods.” He also noted that the spread between spot and contract prices for memory chips ranges from 30% to 50%, meaning short-term supply is significantly more expensive than long-term contracts.

"We have contracts but can't get enough volume, so we have to go to the spot market and pay a premium to grab supply," the Team Group chief said during the briefing. Contract prices for 16GB DDR5 chips climbed from $8.70 in October 2025 to $48 by September 2026. This is an increase of more than 550% in the past 12 months, and it seems that the price hikes are not letting up. He also estimated that supply and demand will not balance until the latter half of 2028 or perhaps even later. “How can prices fall when there’s nothing left?” said the CEO.

The Chairman also noted that even though CXMT and YMTC have increased their market share to almost 10%, most high-end DRAM and NAND flash chips still come from Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix. Even then, the prices for the chips that these Chinese companies make still track the market closely, meaning they’re not the budget savior that many were expecting. As such, he expects that pricing for budget components will not ease until 2029, while high-end chips will continue to remain in short supply.

These estimates go against Acer CEO Jason Chen’s prediction that component pricing will reverse by the latter half of 2027. Chen suggests that only high-end chips, like LPDDR5X-9600 and Nvidia N1-series SoCs, will remain in shortage while mainstream parts will finally go down. PCs will still experience hikes between 5% and 20% until the end of this year, plateau during the first half of 2027, before finally going down. Chen claims that most major suppliers want to hype the shortage for as long as possible to preserve their margins.

Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to know which of these predictions will come true. While consumers would gladly want to have a break from the nearly continuous price hikes that PC parts and components have been experiencing over the past months, the AI data center build-out is apparently continuing, even as many Americans voted against it.

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