VARs Might Not Like This Trip Down Memory Lane
Vista's high requirements and a memory pricing hike could hurt
By Edward F. Moltzen, CRN
A hardware crunch is hovering like a cloud over the PC space, as Microsoft's forthcoming Vista operating system is demanding historic levels of memory— and memory pricing increases may be looming on the horizon.
Though some DRAM vendors such as Kingston Technology, Fountain Valley, Calif., say they are confident they can meet the market's needs for an eyeball-popping 2 Gbytes of memory to support Vista, signs of memory price increases are leading to a growing belief that DRAM could be in such heavy deployment that seasonal price increases may become more than seasonal.
"With a new OS out there, the resources required are high," said Jalil Mahini, owner of Micronet Systems, a Niles, Ill.-based system builder. "Many people will want 1 Gbyte or 2 Gbytes of RAM. I am expecting that to happen in the next three to six months, though not immediately."
Mahini said a small increase in DRAM pricing could likely be absorbed by system builders and tier-one PC makers. "But a bigger increase—nobody can eat the cost if memory pricing goes up 20 percent or higher," Mahini said.
According to an analysis of pricing posted by the Web site dramxchange.com over the past year, spot pricing for DDR 2 512- Mbyte 64 mx8 at 533MHz has climbed by more than 30 percent in the past six months and is about 50 percent higher than a year ago. Though the spot price can fluctuate greatly from month to month, system builders say normal seasonal increases in the fourth quarter are not unheard of. Interviews with several system builders found most saw no alarming changes of late in memory pricing, though some said signs of pricing increases have begun to emerge.
"In the last six months, it's gone up a lot," said Mark Bose, president of Mark Bose & Associates, a Tampa, Fla.-based system builder and solution provider. "But it's hard to say why. This time of year, pricing always goes up in memory."
Over the past month, key vendors have begun spelling out their estimates on how the DRAM and hardware components will be impacted by new technologies in the near term. According to them, it can be described in a word: dramatic.
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