electronics manufacturers They may be another of those greatly affected by the massive hoarding of semiconductors for AI infrastructure, according to the CEO of Phison, one of the largest distributors of controllers for NAND flash memory chips.
The situation in the customer-focused technology market is serious and could become critical in a few months if the lack of inventory worsens and prices continue to rise. If the pressure on consumers, professionals and companies is evident, the person in charge of Phison warns of the situation of others affected.
The executive assures that many manufacturers of consumer electronics “they will go bankrupt or have to abandon product lines” by the end of 2026 due to the memory crisis. The large memory manufacturers have committed all their production to the AI giants seeking the greatest profitability, leaving the rest of the markets in a terrible situation.
The Price index for the retail sector for January speaks of a rise of unknown magnitude in this century (300-400-500% depending on the product) by amount and speed. All of this will seriously affect sales of components and also final consumer products such as laptops or mobile phones. In this sense, the Phison executive says that the production of mobile phones will be reduced by between 200 and 250 million units this year and that of computers and televisions will be significantly reduced.
The situation is not going to improve in the short or medium term
Pua Khein-Seng highlights that memory manufacturers now “they demand advance payment for three years of production” (something unprecedented in the electronics industry) and that those same manufacturers «they internally estimate that supply shortages will last until 2030or even another 10 years».
Pua Khein-Seng also pointed out the implications of the arrival of products such as next-generation accelerators for AI data centers. “If NVIDIA ships tens of millions of units of its Rubin GPU, each with more than 20 TB of SSD, it will consume approximately 20% of global NAND flash memory production capacity from last year ».
In addition, SK Hynix (in the world’s top-3 DRAM and NAND memory manufacturing, along with Samsung and Micron) could follow Micron’s example and abandon consumer markets. The rumor comes from China and cites Asian production sources. Although it is not confirmed, it raises eyebrows since it would further worsen the memory crisis that the technology industry is going through and would support the information from the CEO of Phison, which is terrible for many electronics manufacturers who do not have memories to market their products or have to sell them at crazy prices.
