After Sapphire’s rather reassuring forecasts, things aren’t quite so optimistic for Kingston. According to Cameron Crandall, head of the SSD business on the data center side, the memory market has not finished rising. These forecasts differ from those of Sapphire, which indicated that prices would stabilize within six to eight months! Both players handle memory, but do not have the same purpose. One makes graphics cards, the other storage and RAM. This doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but it’s important to point out that both operate in different sectors.
Kingston advises you to buy now, or risk paying more tomorrow…
Crandall’s view is rather pessimistic (unlike Sapphire’s), since he indicates that the market is on an upward trend, as we’ve all noticed. However, he mentions that even in NAND Flash, the memory used in SSDs, things are starting to take a turn for the worse, with prices jumping 246% since the first quarter of 2025. And of this 246% rise, 70% has occurred in the last 60 days. Inevitably, the man in charge says Kingston won’t be able to absorb the costs, and the brand will pass them on in the bill… Unfortunately.
We don’t know when prices will stabilize, and Crandall’s advice is simple: if you have purchases to make, don’t wait. If you put it off, it will cost you more in 30 days and even more 30 days after that.
The Kingston executive points out that memory prices work in cycles. There are phases of rising prices, phases of falling prices (we like those) and phases of stability. Right now, we’re in such a violent uptrend that, for this gentleman, it’s unprecedented in his 29-year career.
Moreover, it’s because of this phasing that memory producers are reluctant to invest in new production equipment. If they invest now and the market slows down or the AI bubble bursts, they’ll find themselves with useless capacity, an unlikely stock of memory on their hands and a lot of money down the drain.
Finally, Kingston has no intention of following in the footsteps of Micron and Crucial– on the contrary, the brand’s ambition is to fill the void left by its competitor!
