Crucial CT64G56C46S5 DDR5 5600 SODIMM Front 1

Here is one that I did not have on the bingo card today. Micron announced that it is exiting its Crucial consumer business. With DDR5 memory prices skyrocketing due to AI demand, it looks like Crucial is going to be a victim.

Micron Closing Crucial

I know many of you will think this is not real, so here is a quote from Micron on this one:

The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments. (Source: Micron)

From that, it seems like Micron is going to focus on the large-scale AI customers. Having fewer, larger customers has many benefits for an organization like Micron, since it reduces the footprint needed to service customers. For example, handling warranties for a smaller set of customers is easier than handling them for customers who recently purchased a Crucial product. The counterpoint is that fewer big customers are riskier than having many smaller customers.

This decision reflects Micron’s commitment to its ongoing portfolio transformation and the resulting alignment of its business to secular, profitable growth vectors in memory and storage. By concentrating on core enterprise and commercial segments, Micron aims to improve long-term business performance and create value for strategic customers as well as stakeholders. (Source: Micron)

For fun, I took a quick look and the last Crucial product we reviewed was the Crucial X10 2TB Portable SSD Review a few months ago.

Crucial X10 2TB Top 1

The first Crucial review I could find on STH was the Crucial M500 120GB mSATA Benchmarks and Review from 2014.

Crucial M500 120GB mSATA – Overview

This is one of those iconic brands in the industry that has been around since 1996.

Final Words

It makes you wonder how long other companies will stay in the consumer market if they feel that demand on the data center side is strong enough. While this might be a good sign for a company like Kingston, reducing competition, it might also be a sign of things to come if Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix de-prioritize the consumer markets outside of prominent OEMs. DDR5 pricing might not be on the way down too soon.