After Micron discontinued its Crucial brand to better cater to AI data center clients, the company motivates that decision and shows what the future holds.
The most visible impact of the ongoing memory shortages in the IT supply chain, besides the soaring RAM prices, was Micron’s decision to bury its Crucial brand. For years, Micron sold loose DDR memory under the Crucial name, but the lure of the AI market was too strong.
In an interview with Wccftech, Micron itself is now responding to that decision. The company is facing criticism for what many call a consumer-unfriendly decision, and wants to nuance that.
Impulse from data centers
“We want to help customers from all over the world,” says Christopher Moore, VP Marketing for the Mobile and Client Business Unit. “We do that through various channels. We still have a large business in the client and mobile markets. Of course, we also serve our data center customers.
“What is happening now is that the total market and the data center market are growing very significantly,” he continues. “We want to make sure that as a company we address the total market.”
In fact, Micron confirms what is clear. The memory market is growing faster than the memory supply, especially in the data center segment, and Micron wants to serve that segment well. Crucial is the victim of this.
Attention to PCs
Micron does point out that it still supplies a lot of memory for PCs and laptops. To this end, it works with PC builders such as Dell and Asus. As a major memory player, Micron continues to serve those manufacturers directly.
However, there are also limitations there. To optimize the yield of its existing factories as much as possible, Micron wants to make as few diverse SKUs as possible. To make 16 GB LPDDR5, and then 12 GB, the production line must be shut down and reconfigured. Micron therefore wants to deliver the same configurations as much as possible.
Moore: “We work with manufacturers to get the demand as stable as possible, so that we too can get our supply as stable as possible and maximize output.” That immediately illustrates why the number of available memory configurations for a given system in 2026 is likely to be smaller than last year.
New factories
Finally, Micron indicates that it is indeed building new factories, and started doing so several years ago. However, the start-up of a factory takes a very long time.
“The construction of the ID1 factory in Idaho (in the US) started three years ago,” says Moore. “The factory will come online in mid-2027. That is earlier than the originally planned timing of the end of 2027. But you won’t see any real output then. By the time all the qualifications are done, customers are happy with the factory, and everything is running properly, it will be 2028.”
Moore is referring to a factory that is already under construction. Sites that are still in the planning phase are not expected to contribute to production capacity before 2030. This illustrates that the memory shortage will continue for some time. Either the new capacity of Micron and other manufacturers will stabilize the price within a few years, or the demand from the AI field will decrease. Until further notice, however, high prices and shortages seem to be the order of the day.