[SMMSn Brief: National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Price Monitoring Center: Storage Chip Prices Continue to Rise and Spread Downstream]
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Price Monitoring Center stated that since September 2025, due to "explosive" growth in demand and a "cliff-like" shortage in capacity, the global memory market gap has widened, with prices for memory chips continuously rising. In the past month or so, the rate of increase has shown an expanding trend, and it is recommended to pay attention to the impact of memory chip prices on downstream prices. Surveys indicate that as of January this year, the prices of the two main products in the memory chip sector, DRAM and NAND flash, have reached their highest levels since 2016 when data became available. Taking mainstream models as an example, the average contract price for DRAM (DDR4 8Gb 1G*8) in January was $11.5, up about 24% from the previous month and approximately 83% higher than in September 2025; the average contract price for NAND flash (128Gb 16G * 8MLC) was $9.5, up around 65% from the previous month and nearly 1.5 times higher than in September 2025.