Even more bustling than the Shuibei gold market, the storage prices in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen have doubled! Merchants say, "Prices are rising every day, and they may be even more expensive later," but they dare not stock up

A severe price storm is unfolding in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen! Its momentum has surpassed that of the soaring gold prices in the Shenzhen Shuibei market.

Recently, domestic smartphone manufacturers have collectively raised the prices of their flagship new products. The prices of new phones such as OPPO Find X9, Realme GT8 series, and vivo X300 have all increased compared to the previous generation, with the Redmi K90 series, known as the "price butcher," seeing price hikes ranging from 100 to 400 yuan compared to the last generation.

For this wave of collective price increases, manufacturers unanimously pointed to a common source—the storage chips.

Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen is known as the "barometer" of China's electronics market, where prices of storage products, including DDR4 (fourth-generation double data rate synchronous dynamic random-access memory) and SSD (solid-state drive), have doubled, with prices even changing "daily." The soaring price curve of storage chips has been humorously dubbed by netizens as the "best financial product of the year" and "rising faster than gold."

What factors are driving this round of price increases for storage chips? Why does the industry exhibit such significant cyclical characteristics, with the alternating scenarios of companies making huge profits and suffering massive losses due to volatile prices? Reporters from the Daily Economic News (hereinafter referred to as "the reporters") conducted an investigation into this.

Phenomenon: Prices of storage products in Huaqiangbei have doubled

"Storage products are all rising." When the reporters entered Huaqiangbei, they often heard such statements. The dramatic fluctuations in spot market prices convey a tense signal of supply and demand.

Taking the commonly seen 16G DDR4 memory stick as an example, "It used to be 180-190 yuan, now it's 400 yuan here, and even more expensive online," said a DDR4 seller, pointing to the products on the counter. When the reporter tentatively suggested, "I'll come back when it's cheaper," the seller shook their head and said, "It won't get cheaper. Although the current price is relatively high, it may get even more expensive later; the manufacturer has notified us of chip shortages."

Faced with the rapid price increases, merchants generally exhibit a "fear of heights" mentality. "We can't control this market; once we stock up, we're afraid of a drop," one seller admitted.

Another merchant also stated, "Who dares to stock up at this time? We buy goods daily. Prices are rising every day, with a different price each day. When the 16G DDR4 memory stick was 330 yuan, I thought it had peaked, but now it's over 400, and the better brands are around 420; just yesterday it was 390 yuan." This "fear of heights" mentality among merchants reflects the rapid and abnormal nature of this price increase.

Not only memory sticks, but the prices of solid-state drives (SSDs) have also surged significantly. One seller quoted the price of a brand new 1TB SSD from Samsung at 620 yuan, emphasizing that "it has doubled in a month"; the 2TB version is as high as around 1200 yuan, while domestic brands are relatively cheaper, with 2TB products also costing 860 yuan.

Another seller provided a comparison of old and new prices: "The current price of a second-hand 1TB is over 400 yuan, while a brand new one is 500-600 yuan... It used to be just over 200 yuan; the market has been continuously increasing prices. It's not us raising prices; our procurement costs are also high, and we can't even buy them The rapid rise has made it difficult for upstream manufacturers to respond. According to supply chain news cited by the Taiwan Electronic Times, Samsung Electronics has taken the lead in suspending contract quotes for October DDR5 DRAM (the latest product in the current mature process of the DRAM industry), prompting other memory manufacturers such as SK Hynix and Micron to follow suit, which will lead to a "food shortage" in the supply chain, with the recovery of quotes expected to be delayed until mid-November. Industry insiders believe that the memory market has "completely entered a seller's market."

On social media, many users who assembled computers in advance or hoarded memory sticks have shared their experiences, expressing their relief that their unintentional decisions have brought "excess returns." Data from TrendForce shows that in the third quarter of 2025, DRAM prices have surged by 171.8% compared to the same period last year.

Finding the Cause: Behind the Price Surge, AI Reshapes Supply and Demand for Storage

Chen Libai, chairman of ADATA, the world's second-largest memory module manufacturer, previously stated that the current situation of widespread shortages and price increases across four major storage categories—DRAM, NAND flash, SSD, and mechanical hard drives—is unprecedented in his 30 years in the industry. He believes that the fourth quarter of this year is the true starting point for a major bull market in storage and the beginning of severe shortages, predicting a prosperous outlook for the industry next year.

So what exactly is driving this round of price increases? On the surface, the fluctuations perceived by consumers are caused by supply and demand imbalances, but behind this is the "insatiable demand" brought about by artificial intelligence (AI), which is reshaping the storage industry, primarily driven by enterprise-level AI capital expenditures.

Since the birth of ChatGPT in November 2022, which sparked a wave of generative artificial intelligence and prompted a global rush to build AI data centers, global storage giants such as Samsung, Hynix, and Micron have collectively shifted a large amount of wafer production capacity towards HBM (High Bandwidth Memory, primarily to meet GPU chip demand) and DDR5 production. This has directly squeezed the capacity space of mature processes, including DDR4, creating a sharp contradiction between the drastic contraction of supply and the enormous existing demand.

Memory is one of the three pillars of the semiconductor industry. For ordinary consumers, almost every electronic product around them, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, relies on memory chips.

If we further segment memory, it can be divided into flash memory and RAM. Among them, flash memory (which retains data after power loss) mainly includes NAND Flash and NOR Flash, while RAM primarily consists of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory). DRAM is mainly used for computer memory (such as DDR) and mobile phone memory (such as LPDDR). Additionally, high-end products based on DRAM technology, such as HBM (High Bandwidth Memory, primarily to meet GPU chip demand), can meet the demand for "massive data real-time flow" in scenarios such as AI computing and servers.

For a long time, the global storage market has shown an oligopolistic structure. Data from TrendForce shows that as of the second quarter of 2025, the global DRAM market is divided among SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, with market shares of 38.7%, 32.7%, and 22%, respectively; The NAND flash market is dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Kioxia, with market shares of 32.9%, 21.1%, and 13.5% respectively in the second quarter of 2025. These major manufacturers not only provide memory chips to end companies, including Apple, but also hold the pricing power in the global storage market.

In recent years, the rise of AI has disrupted the previously stable supply-demand balance. From ChatGPT to the text-to-video model Sora (OpenAI's AI text-to-video large model), to the global popularity of DeepSeek, as well as various companies' self-built AI large models, all require AI servers, which has directly increased the demand for storage technologies such as HBM and DDR5.

Micron Technology's estimates show that the DRAM and NAND requirements for each AI server are 8 times and 3 times that of ordinary servers, respectively.

In the face of the historic opportunities brought by AI, companies such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron began to cut back on some lower-margin traditional DRAM production capacity as early as the third quarter of last year, shifting to the production of higher-margin products like HBM and DDR5. In April of this year, overseas manufacturers successively announced the cessation of production of outdated DRAM products such as DDR4 and LPDDR4X (low-power double data rate 4X memory, the mobile version of DDR4), further exacerbating supply tightness.

"The price increase stems from manufacturers announcing the end of the DDR4 product lifecycle and the advance stocking demand due to changes in the international situation," said TrendForce analyst Xu Jiayuan. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of this year and the first half of next year, Xu believes that the driving force for price increases will mainly come from North American data centers accelerating investment in AI servers, which will drive demand for DDR5 RDIMM, LPDDR5X, and HBM. In the context of insufficient capacity expansion by manufacturers, the supply-demand imbalance for mature process products will intensify.

Regarding the future trend of DDR4, Xu expects that the tight situation will last at least until the first half of 2026. "PC brand manufacturers are accelerating the adoption of DDR5 in response, while the consumer sectors such as television and networking have slowed down the transition from DDR3 to DDR4."

Author of this article: Wang Jing, Source: Daily Economic News, Original Title: "Hotter than the Water Bay Gold Market, Products in Shenzhen Huaqiangbei Double in Price! Merchants Say 'Prices Rise Every Day, It Might Be More Expensive Later,' But They Dare Not Stock Up"

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