Samsung estimates record-breaking $13 billion profits and says memory apocalypse tainted prices are 'inevitable'
20 trillion won, nil.
(Image credit: JHVEPhoto via Getty Images)
You know what they say: New year, more doom and gloom about the memory supply crisis. As it's January, we're also going to start hearing about how big tech fared financially during the final quarter of 2025—and obviously, many of these massive corporations are doing far better than anyone who just wants a reasonably priced upgrade for their gaming PC.
Case in point, Samsung Electronics is already estimating that its final quarter operating profits for 2025 is about "20 trillion Korean won." That's well over 13 billion USD or 10 billion GBP—and almost threefold what Samsung made during 2024's fourth quarter.
Whichever way you slice it, the memory apocalypse doesn't exactly seem to be hurting the company—at least, not yet. That said, both SK Hynix and Samsung itself have reportedly told cloud service partners to expect their server memory prices to increase by as much as 70% more than Q4 2025, according to The Korea Economic Daily.
CES 2026
(Image credit: Future)
Catch up with CES 2026: We're on the ground in sunny Las Vegas covering all the latest announcements from some of the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and more.
As this news most directly affects cloud providers such as Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services, I'm not exactly shedding a tear. However, there's potentially more bad news on the way for anyone even vaguely entertaining the idea of buying new tech this year. For instance, TrendForce predicts DRAM prices will increase up to 60% by the end of Q1 2026. It's not unexpected, but I am still wincing—and it may only get worse before it gets better.
