In a shocker, Micron is exiting the consumer market for memory products, including DRAM and SSD, which is poised to worsen amid an ongoing memory shortage.
US-based Micron will retire memory products sold under the Crucial brand, which includes NVMe SSDs and external storage, as well as DDR4 and DDR5 RAM.
Consumer shipments will continue until February 2026. Going forward, Micron will focus on supplying memory for AI data centers, a more lucrative business that has been hogging memory supply at the expense of consumer products.
“Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments,” EVP Sumit Sadana said in the announcement.
(Credit: PCMag)
Research firm TrendForce reports that Micron was the third largest supplier of DRAM behind Samsung and SK Hynix. The three companies also dominated the DRAM market with a 92% market share.
As a result, Micron’s exit leaves a sizable hole in the consumer memory market, depriving PC builders of the trusted Crucial brand. It also remains unclear if any company can fill the gap when analysts are warning that the memory shortage could last for years. Samsung and SK Hynix are also reportedly prioritizing profitability over risky expansions.
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In addition, the news might not bode well for PC graphics cards since Micron supplied GDDR7 video memory to Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series, in addition to Samsung and SK Hynix. We’ve reached out to Micron about what impact this might have on its GDDR7 business for consumer GPUs, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.
In NAND Flash, used for SSDs, Micron had a 13% share back in Q2, according to TrendForce, which looked at both shipments for consumer and enterprise systems.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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