According to a new interview, Micron’s exit from the consumer market may not be the perceived dark cloud most believe it to be, and there’s a silver lining after all. Christopher Moore, Micron VP of Marketing, Mobile and Client Business Unit, attempted in good spirit to provide more details on the company’s recent departure from the consumer market by removing its Crucial brand of memory and storage products, but good intentions aside, this interview with Wccftech has been more akin to pouring gas on a fire than putting flames out.
At this point, one would have to be living in a cave, on an island, and on another planet to not be aware of the current memory shortage caused by the explosive growth of AI development and data center growth. Micron has already publicly said it withdrew from the consumer market so it could focus its resources on enterprise orders. However, Moore states in the interview that Micron is still serving consumers through its client (OEM or system integrators) and mobile sectors while also supporting data center customers. In short, those with small wallets can rely on those with big wallets to take care of their needs as long as one is willing to buy a complete system, phone, laptop, or use a service that uses Micron’s products, rather than being able to purchase a memory kit.
“Well, first I would want to try to help everybody understand that the perception may not be exactly correct, at least from our point of view. So I would never want to tell someone what to think or that they’re wrong, but our viewpoint is that we are trying to help consumers around the world. We’re just doing it through different channels. We still have a very sizable business in the client and mobile markets. We are also, of course, servicing our data center customers.”
Christopher Moore, Micron VP of Marketing, Mobile and Client Business Unit
This statement does little to assuage the ongoing stresses of a market where prices are doubling and tripling at never-before-seen rates, and people across the internet are already venting more anger. Meanwhile, the VP does touch on another topic, which, to some degree, makes a bit more sense. By limiting the number of different products it makes, Micron can streamline its manufacturing processes for increased output. After all, the PC market often has multitudes of different product offerings, whether it be memory speeds, timings, size configurations, etc., there can be many types of kits to produce. The exec explains that to provide these, fabs must stop after each run to reconfigure machines for each type of product, which cuts down on a fab’s potential output, but committing as few as possible allows for a greater total throughput.
“Because you can imagine if you’ve got a fab running with a bunch of different machines for one piece of silicon, and then you have to stop those machines and get it to run on another piece of silicon, you’re gonna get less output. It’s just, and it’s not as simple as that, but that’s the best way that I can explain it. What we’re doing now is trying to run as few pieces of silicon as possible to max out, few differentiated DIDs as possible to max out the output, okay? “
Christopher Moore, Micron VP of Marketing, Mobile and Client Business Unit
However, while this is somewhat truthfull it doesn’t address the idea of perhaps sticking to a few standard products for consumers instead of every niche, but then again, consumer needs probably cannot compete with unimaginable corporate-sized orders.
The exec also points out that the increased demand for memory by data centers is not a Micron issue, but an industry issue, and the market is requiring more “bits” than it used to. Moore explained that demand used to be in the 30%-35% range but is now more like 50%-60%, which the entire industry is short in supplying. Multiple sources have already stated that demand is expected to increase as the growth of data centers is not expected to begin slowing for several years, at the earliest. It is hoped, however, that as more fabs are created worldwide, perhaps the strain on the consumer market will wane, but that could be more of a pipedream as long as manufacturers see quicker and greater profits for enterprise solutions.