Micron has turned over a new leaf, announcing that its Crucial brand will disappear from the consumer sector. Like Samsung and SK Hynix, these folks are also turning to easy money by betting on AI. Their press release says so: “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit Crucial from the consumer business in order to improve the supply and support of strategic customers in a rapidly expanding segment.” If you read between the lines, consumer RAM and SSDs aren’t making enough money any more, we’re out of here.
Micron wants the money… So does he…
Well, I don’t think there’s anything more to be said for the facts. All memory manufacturers are dedicated to producing memory that is widely used in the AI sector. We’re talking here about LPDDR5X and HBM. These companies prefer to focus on this sector rather than invest in production lines. We’ve seen this with SK Hynix and Samsung, whose priority is profit. As a result, companies are maintaining a situation of controlled scarcity as a matter of strategic intent.
It’s a strategy that can backfire, especially when it comes to Chinese production. It doesn’t look like it from here, but they are at least partly responsible for the stoppage of DDR4 production by these three major memory manufacturers. If the latter manage to increase their production capacities and equip themselves with substantial DDR5 production lines, they have the potential to bypass our Western giants.
In short, it remains to be seen what will happen. For the time being, Crucial remains in place until the end of the fiscal quarter ending February 2026. During this transition period, don’t worry about your warranty, it will continue to be covered.
In the meantime, we can only savor the hypocrisy dripping from the brand’s press release: “Thanks to our passionate consumer community, the Crucial brand has become synonymous with technical leadership, quality and reliability in cutting-edge memory and storage products. We wanted to thank our millions of customers, hundreds of partners and all the Micron team members who have supported Crucial on this 29-year journey”. And to say thank you, what better way than to slam the door?
