The price of HBM products may increase by 5~10% next year
In recent years, the demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) has surged dramatically, especially with the rise of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, making this trend increasingly apparent. Sales of HBM products have climbed steadily, and prices have risen correspondingly. Despite efforts by memory suppliers to increase HBM production capacity, they still struggle to meet market demand, with rumors suggesting that SK Hynix and Micron’s HBM capacity is already sold out through the end of 2025.
Market research firm TrendForce has released a new report indicating that thanks to prices several times higher than traditional DRAM (approximately five times that of DDR5), coupled with the iterative needs of AI chips, there has been a push from 2023 to 2025 to increase HBM capacity. In 2023 and 2024, HBM accounted for 2% and 5% of DRAM capacity, respectively, and this is expected to rise to over 10% by 2025. In terms of revenue, HBM’s share of total DRAM revenue is projected to exceed 20% in 2024 and could rise to over 30% in 2025.
Memory suppliers have begun negotiating prices for 2025 HBM products starting in the second quarter of this year. However, constrained by DRAM capacity and to avoid a capacity squeeze, initial price increases of 5% to 10% have been implemented, covering HBM2E, HBM3, and HBM3E. The reasons for these early negotiations are threefold: firstly, buyers are confident in the demand for AI and are willing to accept higher prices; secondly, the yield rate for HBM3E is currently only 40% to 60%, and there is a need for stabilization of supply; thirdly, differences in sales prices among various suppliers due to varying supply capacities impact profitability.
At this stage, there is a significant shift towards HBM3E products, and the emergence of more 12-layer stacked chips is driving increases in HBM capacity. It is estimated that the annual growth rate of HBM demand in 2024 could approach 200%, with the potential to double again by 2025.
