Driven by these demand disparities, domestic and international customers show different attitudes toward eSSD price hikes: domestic customers have limited willingness to absorb continuous price increases, while the North American market demonstrates higher acceptance due to strong demand support. Consequently, pricing increases for Q3 eSSDs have diverged among different Memory original manufacturers. CFM estimates that the overall price hikes will range from 10% to 30%.

SK hynix Inc. announced in collaboration with Sandisk that it has unveiled the first standard specifications for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF), a next-generation storage technology.

According to industry insiders cited by media outlets, CXMT's LPDDR6 is approaching the final stage of R&D validation, marking a critical step before mass production.

According to industry sources cited by media outlets, Samsung Foundry is ramping up efforts to hit its target of 100% capacity utilization in the second half of this year. Its current overall utilization rate stands at roughly 70%–80%. Given the existing order backlog and progress in contract negotiations, internal and external stakeholders are optimistic about achieving the goal, which is expected to reverse its prolonged run of operating losses.

Apple released its fiscal 2026 third-quarter earnings (for the period ended June 27, 2026), revealing a sharply polarized profile. While revenue and net profit hit all-time highs for the June quarter, Apple's stock tumbled more than 6% in after-hours trading, pressured by underwhelming forward guidance and supply chain disruptions triggered by the global AI expansion.

Driven by the Generative AI Wave, Kioxia Delivers a "Historic" Quarterly Performance – All Core Financial Metrics Hit Record Highs in FY2026 Q1 (ended June 30, 2026).

During its Q2 2026 earnings call, Samsung Electronics stated that the AI computing boom is driving a rapid surge in server Memory demand, and the supply-demand gap in the Memory market is expected to widen further next year.

The new 9th-generation BiCS FLASH™ 1Tb TLC devices, developed using a 230-layer stacking process based on 8th-generation BiCS FLASH™ technology and advanced CMOS technology, deliver a NAND interface speed of 4.8Gb/s, a 33% improvement over 8th-generation devices, matching the performance of 10th-generation devices.

SK Hynix achieved record-high earnings in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2026. During the subsequent earnings call, the company stated that improvements in AI efficiency will expand industry demand, and AI infrastructure investment will remain robust in the long term. While short-term DRAM ASPs have been relatively weak due to product mix shifts, they are expected to improve in the second half of the year as HBM4 shipments ramp up. Currently, the iteration of new HBM products is progressing smoothly. The company is stabilizing the market through long-term agreements and maintaining steady and efficient capacity investments.

Looking back at July, changes in the Memory market primarily centered around price increases for DDR5 secondary-grade dies and LP4X/5X resources, which drove up the prices of related finished products. This was mainly because Memory original manufacturers locked in a portion of their resources in advance, causing temporary supply shortages and further tightening supply to Memory vendors. Although Memory vendors have made certain price adjustments on the finished product side in response, each round of price hikes continues to test the willingness of the demand side to absorb them. With upstream supply unlikely to improve in the coming months and ongoing expectations for further price increases, Memory vendors will face intensified cost pressures in the second half of the year.

According to Herald Business, SK hynix is set to begin full-scale mass production of LPDDR6 Memory in the second half of this year, with the first batch of products expected to be featured in Xiaomi's next-generation flagship smartphones. However, regarding the supply to Xiaomi, SK hynix stated that it cannot confirm details concerning specific customers.

According to Korean media reports, Samsung Electronics' retrofit of its Hwaseong Line 12 production facility, which began in the second half of last year, has been completed this month. Samsung plans to repurpose this line for the back-end-of-line (BEOL) processes of its Hwaseong Line 15 facility. Line 15 is responsible for mass-producing the industry’s most advanced DRAM, including 1b (fifth-generation 10nm-class) and 1c (sixth-generation 10nm-class) chips. The back-end processes are expected to begin operations as early as the second half of this year, and the coordinated use of Lines 12 and 15 in Hwaseong is set to accelerate Samsung Electronics' DRAM capacity expansion.

SK hynix has effectively become the second-largest shareholder of Japanese Memory chipmaker Kioxia after private equity firm Bain Capital sold most of its stake, a shift that is drawing close attention from Japanese authorities because the two companies compete in the global NAND Flash Memory market.

According to foreign media reports, Apple has approached U.S. government officials with a request to be allowed to use Memory chips from CXMT and YMTC in devices sold outside the United States. Micron Technology, however, has been actively lobbying against this request. Micron executives have warned that allowing U.S. tech companies to source from Chinese manufacturers, regardless of where the final products are sold, would undermine the development of domestic U.S. manufacturing.

SK Group and NVIDIA have announced plans for a $500 billion plus comprehensive partnership to establish AI infrastructure serving the surging demand for global compute.