Facepalm: Major memory manufacturers have repeatedly warned shareholders that the memory industry faces many more years of chaos and high prices. Now even smaller players such as TeamGroup are sounding the same alarm, saying conditions will soon turn brutal for both pricing and availability.
TeamGroup recently shared financial results for its latest quarter. Beyond the soaring figures and shifting market trends, the report highlights the worrisome direction the entire chip industry is heading toward. As it turns out, the worst of the memory shortage is still to come.
According to TeamGroup CEO Chen Ching-wen, prices will keep climbing for many months. The IT industry will endure its worst chip shortage from the final quarter of 2026 through the end of the second quarter next year. For now, customers can still buy chip-based products by paying a premium. Before long, Chen said, people won't be able to buy anything even if they have money to spare.
TeamGroup is a Taiwanese manufacturer operating several brands of computer memory, memory cards, solid state drives, mobile accessories, and other chip-based industrial products. The company relies on the major memory chipmakers for its supply, and those supplies are drying up fast.
Chen said TeamGroup has been trading and signing long-term supply agreements with chipmakers for around 30 years, but nothing about today's market is "traditional" anymore. A "ferocious" price rally is underway, the company confirmed. The contract price of DDR5 16Gb chips was $8.70 in October 2025 and climbed to $48 by September 2026. DDR4 8Gb chips have surged as well, and the spot market is even worse, with a 30% to 50% premium to pay.
"We have contracts but can't get enough volume, so we have to go to the spot market and pay a premium to grab supply," Chen said.
Prices aren't the only disruption TeamGroup highlighted. The company now does most of its business in the B2B market, supplying memory to enterprise customers and industrial control applications. B2B revenue climbed from roughly 24% in the first three quarters of 2025 to 64% in the first three quarters of 2026, while B2C end-consumer revenue fell from 75% to 35% over the same period.
Chen explained that TeamGroup isn't unilaterally changing its strategic positioning, but simply adjusting to massive shifts in demand and customer needs. Most of the industry's DRAM output has now been absorbed by AI data centers and other enterprise-grade applications.
Of course, this AI-driven market upheaval has a silver lining for TeamGroup and other memory makers. In Q3 2026, the Taiwanese company's revenue grew 33% from the previous quarter to NT$10.139 billion (around $311.5 million). Operating profit rose 46.8% to NT$4.511 billion, while net profit after tax went up nearly 50% to NT$3.618 billion.