"The order schedule has been pushed to next year" The various scenes under the storage super cycle: who is cashing out, who is struggling

【Introduction】AI ignites the price surge, storage “super cycle” redistributes the cake: module manufacturers’ profits double, accelerating their market share, while terminal manufacturers are forced to raise prices and cut configurations

In 2026, Huaqiangbei no longer smells of soldering iron fumes but is filled with a restless “gold rush” atmosphere. “Two years ago, we still had to beg customers to clear inventory, now our quotes can’t keep up with the rising prices,” said a shop owner specializing in memory modules in Huaqiangbei, smiling broadly.

Along with the price increase wave, companies related to storage chips have consecutively reported “turnaround” results: some have returned to profit, some have doubled their earnings. In these various announcements, the same reason is repeatedly pointed out—storage prices have stabilized and risen from lows, driven by AI demand.

Meanwhile, a clear contrast is gradually emerging: on one side, storage industry chain companies are seeing a recovery in performance, with many growth leaders and doubling stocks; on the other side, terminal manufacturers are being pushed to change prices and reduce models due to rising costs, and notebook shipment forecasts are being revised downward.

In this “super cycle,” who is fulfilling, who is competing for position, and who is struggling?

Who is fulfilling?

Various signals indicate that the storage market is emerging from the trough and entering a new upward cycle. As 2025 performance forecasts are densely disclosed, A-share storage-related companies are also delivering impressive “report cards.”

According to statistics, as of January 29, 52 A-share companies with storage chip concepts have released their 2025 performance forecasts, with 25 reporting positive results and 31 achieving year-over-year growth in net profit attributable to the parent company. Among them, 13 companies have an upper limit of over 100% increase in net profit attributable to the parent.

Storage price increases are the core factor behind companies’ earnings growth. Baiwei Storage stated: “Starting from the second quarter of 2025, as storage prices stabilize and rise, the company’s key projects are gradually delivered, sales revenue and gross margin are gradually improving, and operating performance is steadily improving.”

Jiang Bolong explained: “Storage prices bottomed out in the first quarter and then stabilized and rose. By the end of the third quarter, due to explosive demand for AI servers and the shift of original factory capacity to enterprise-level products, supply further became unbalanced, leading to continuous storage price increases. Relying on high-end product layout, overseas expansion, and own brand advantages, the company turned losses into profits in the first half of the year, with profit levels steadily rising in the second half.”

The price increase of storage chips and downstream products is expected to continue. A recent report from market research firm Counterpoint Research shows that the storage market has surpassed the historical high of 2018, with suppliers’ bargaining power reaching the highest level in history. Storage prices are expected to rise another 40% to 50% in the first quarter of 2026, and continue to rise about 20% in the second quarter.

With the arrival of the AI-driven storage “super cycle,” several major storage stocks have emerged in the A-share market. As of the close on January 29, 2026, Puran Co. has risen over 119% this year. Meanwhile, Deke Co. and Hengshuo Co. have increased by more than 80%.

Who is competing for position?

“The production line machines are running at full capacity, orders are scheduled into next year, and we don’t even dare to answer customer calls for orders, afraid of offending anyone,” said a Shenzhen module factory manager, both excited and anxious.

This is the daily reality for storage chip module manufacturers. An AI-driven “super cycle” of storage chips is reshaping the entire industry chain with unprecedented intensity.

An industry analyst told reporters: “The memory demand for ordinary servers is about 64–128GB, but AI servers need to handle large model training and inference, with single-machine memory requirements soaring to 512GB–1TB, 8–10 times that of ordinary servers. More importantly, this demand is accelerating.”

As AI rapidly spreads across various application scenarios, higher requirements are being placed on semiconductor storage capacity. At the onset of this industry upturn, change has become an inevitable choice for domestic module manufacturers—how to seize a place in the “super cycle”?

The answer may be: no longer limited to processing storage wafers, but moving upstream to technology development to gain higher added value.

In the past, domestic module manufacturers mainly competed on price in consumer markets like mobile phones and PCs; now, they are shifting toward enterprise markets such as data centers and AI servers. Customers in these fields are less sensitive to price and more focused on product stability and reliability, providing more substantial profit margins.

Jiang Bolong revealed in its performance forecast that, relying on full-stack capabilities including main control chips, firmware algorithms, and packaging testing, the company has established deep cooperation with several wafer foundries and leading intelligent terminal device manufacturers. Flagship storage products represented by UFS4.1 are on the verge of mass shipment.

At the same time, the company has achieved mass shipments of customized AI storage products for top clients. During the reporting period, it also launched wafer-level SiP packaged mSSD products, which are being accelerated into major PC manufacturers.

Recently, Jiang Bolong announced a fundraising plan of 3.7 billion yuan, focusing on investment in storage application technology development, NAND Flash main control chip design, storage chip packaging and testing, to enhance sustainable profitability.

Meanwhile, Demingli disclosed in November 2025 that it plans to raise no more than 3.2 billion yuan through private placement, for SSD capacity expansion projects, DRAM capacity expansion projects, Demingli intelligent storage management and R&D headquarters projects, and to supplement working capital.

Puran Co. is also “filling in the puzzle,” acquiring a 31% stake in Noah Changtian for 144 million yuan, achieving indirect control of storage enterprise SHM, which was spun off from SK Hynix’s 2D NAND-related business, further enriching its product line.

An industry insider said: “The window period waits for no one. The slower the action to seize the position, the more likely it is to be sidelined in the next ‘cake-cutting’ round.”

Who is under pressure?

The price increase wave flows from upstream to downstream, and the most severely impacted are often terminal manufacturers facing consumers—they are most sensitive to prices, most dependent on sales volume, and hardest to fully pass on costs.

TrendForce’s latest industry survey shows that, due to the combined impact of CPU shortages and price hikes, storage prices soaring, and the rising costs of components like PCBs and batteries, global notebook shipments in the first quarter of 2026 are expected to decrease by 14.8% quarter-over-quarter, far below initial brand expectations. Meanwhile, the full-year shipment forecast has been revised downward from a previous decline of 5.4% to 9.4%, indicating significant short-term industry uncertainty.

Under cost pressures, terminal strategies generally have two options: raise prices to maintain gross profit or cut configurations to preserve prices. Since late 2025, leading manufacturers have begun to strategically adjust prices across multiple product lines.

At the start of 2026, Lenovo has adjusted prices for several of its laptops on its official website. For mid-to-high-end models priced above 5,000 yuan, the official retail price has increased by 500 to 1,500 yuan. Dell raised its commercial computer prices by about 10%–30% since late 2025; Asus issued a price adjustment notice, implementing strategic price hikes on some products from January 5, 2026; HP also publicly indicated that the second half of 2026 could be more difficult, and may continue to raise prices if necessary.

Notably, many manufacturers including Xiaomi, Lenovo, and OPPO have gradually adjusted prices for new mid-range and flagship models, with some brands even canceling plans to launch low-end models. It is understood that the cost structure of smartphones heavily depends on memory configurations, with mid-range models’ memory costs accounting for 15%–20% of BOM costs, and high-end flagship models about 10%–15%.

Xiaomi President Lu Weibing recently stated during the preheating of the new Redmi phone that “the memory price hike” has forced brands to either raise prices or reduce configurations, directly shaking the “cost-performance” foundation of mid-range phones.

Meanwhile, signs of “profit compression” are also beginning to appear. Chinese smartphone maker Transsion Holdings disclosed its 2025 performance forecast on January 29, 2026: expected revenue of about 65.568 billion yuan, down 4.58% year-over-year; net profit attributable to the parent of about 2.546 billion yuan, down 54.11% year-over-year. The company explicitly pointed out that, affected by supply chain costs and rising prices of components like storage, product costs increased, leading to a decline in overall gross margin, along with increased sales expenses and R&D investments.

In this context, IDC analyst Guo Tianxiang believes that China’s smartphone shipments may see a significant decline in 2026. TrendForce also warned that, due to ongoing storage supply tightness, smaller smartphone brands will face greater resource acquisition difficulties, and a new round of “reshuffling” in the market is possible, with the trend of the strong getting stronger becoming more evident.

When price hikes move from channel quotes to financial reports and then to end-user retail prices, who is fulfilling? Who is competing for position? Who is struggling? The answers may continue to be written in every price increase letter, every shipment, and every performance report in the first half of 2026.