SMI CEO Wallace. Kou: NAND Flash Could Face Shortages Through 2028, Memory Prices Expected to Keep Rising in 2026H2

According to Taiwanese media reports, Wallace. Kou, CEO of Silicon Motion, predicts that driven by the shift of AI investment focus toward inference, NAND Flash could face shortages all the way through 2028, and memory prices will continue to rise in the second half of this year. He noted that North American cloud service providers have been actively signing long-term contracts with chipmakers to secure production capacity. However, even if major memory manufacturers start expanding production now, it will take at least two to three years for new capacity to become effective, which cannot immediately relieve supply constraints. As the short-term supply-demand gap remains difficult to bridge, memory prices will keep rising in the second half of this year, though the increase may be smaller than that seen in the first half. Continued high price levels could be detrimental to balanced industry development, and some handset and PC manufacturers are already struggling with rising cost pressures. Large brands with purchasing advantages, such as Apple, are expected to see their market shares increase significantly.