The memory shortage is in full swing, and Zotac is sounding the alarm. If this situation continues, some manufacturers could disappear in the coming years. Between high prices and a slowing market, some may not sell enough equipment to survive.
Zotac is ending its cashback system in Korea!Â
Currently, the memory market is under intense pressure, with supply unable to meet demand. Since AI has become truly accessible, there has been very high demand in this sector. Inevitably, equipment capable of powering and driving the various models must be produced, and this equipment uses certain types of memory that are expensive in terms of silicon. As a result, memory manufacturers are allocating more production lines to this type of memory (HBM and LPDDR in particular). This is to the detriment of chips used in the consumer sector: DDR4/5 and GDDR6/7.
Inevitably, with this imbalance between supply and demand, prices are rising, leading to the current situation. There comes a point where manufacturers can no longer absorb the costs, and this is reflected in the final price. To make some immediate savings, Zotac is canceling its 2% cashback program in South Korea and warning that the current situation could leave manufacturers out in the cold. Smaller manufacturers are potentially the most vulnerable due to their lower sales volumes.
Already, we expect to see limited supply on certain graphics cards or memory capacities. In addition, even NVIDIA’s largest partners may reduce the number of cards in circulation for certain GPUs and focus on models that sell best under normal circumstances or are more profitable. Our colleague cites MSI’s RTX 5080 Expert, which has virtually disappeared from store shelves.
Therefore, it is not impossible that this situation could favor older generations of cards that may remain in stock in stores… But prices would remain high once again.