Team Group Chief Executive Gerry Chen warned this week that the memory-chip shortage will worsen through the second quarter of 2027. On Team Group's third-quarter earnings call, Chen predicted no downward price trend in 2027; he does not expect supply and demand to balance until the second half of 2028 at the earliest. "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, according to Fortune and Tom's Hardware; he placed the gap between spot and contract prices at 30% to 50%.
Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology have shifted factory capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, starving conventional DRAM and NAND flash supplies used in smartphones, personal computers, and vehicles. Contract prices for a 16-gigabit DDR5 chip jumped from $8.70 in October 2025 to $48 in September 2026, more than fivefold in a year. Business-to-business sales reached 64.6% of Team Group's revenue in the first three quarters of 2026, up from 24.6% a year earlier. The squeeze boosted Team Group's third-quarter revenue to a record NT$10.14 billion, up nearly 34% sequentially; net profit hit NT$3.62 billion as gross margin climbed to 49.3% from 42.8%.
Apple reportedly cut component orders for iPhone 18 Pro models after raising starting prices by $100, and IDC projects global smartphone shipments to fall 16.7% in 2026; global PC shipments have also dropped 20% over 12 months. Team Group's new facility in New Taipei City is scheduled to begin production in the second quarter of 2027. SK Hynix warned last month that shortages could persist until 2030, noting long-term agreements already cover more than half of its capacity for 2027 and 2028, while Micron has signed 26 multi-year take-or-pay contracts backed by $32 billion in customer commitments.
