Micron Technology

Micron Technology, Inc. is a US memory maker headquartered in Idaho, with fabs in the United States, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan. DRAM and NAND are commodity cycles: prices crash when everyone adds capacity and spike when they do not.

In the 2000s, memory makers including Infineon, Samsung, Hynix, and others were fined in the United States and Europe for fixing DRAM prices. Micron received amnesty in the US for cooperating. That history is why every memory upcycle now draws a collusion question even when the cause is a capacity cycle.

Today three firms — Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron — make nearly all DRAM. That concentration does not prove a current cartel. It does mean a coordinated cut in wafer starts would move every PC, phone, and server.

Export controls and subsidies have a competition effect. Rules that limit what Micron can sell into China, or subsidies that fund a rival fab, change who has capacity. They are industrial policy sitting on top of an oligopoly.

Three-firm DRAM supply is the structure.

The historical DRAM cartel is a proved conspiracy, with Micron as the cooperating firm, not the firm that was fined as the ringleader.

Capacity announcements move price because buyers cannot switch to a fourth supplier of scale.

NAND is slightly broader and still an oligopoly.

Phone and PC prices embed memory costs buyers never see as a line item.

A server buyer negotiating DRAM has three calls to make.