That's not true. We've seen prices from supply shock go back down (the increase in hard drive prices when there were floods in Asia 10-15 years ago comes to mind as an example). It does take a while, but it will happen eventually.

Even then, prices stayed elevated for years. They never went back to pre-supply shock prices. Right around that time too the industry consolidated. WD bought Hitachi, Seagate bought Samsung's HDD business. It left a duopoly, so now there was no competitive pressure for a price war. Prices got locked in higher than pre-flood levels, intentionally.

For the current DRAM situation, I can almost promise we'll never see $60-$90 RAM again. Maybe, 32GB won't cost you $500 eventually, but it'll cost you $250-$350 instead of $500. If the market can bear it, why would anyone get into a price war that's just a race to the bottom where no one wins?

> They never went back to pre-supply shock prices.

What do you mean?

2011: 2 TB HDD for $79.99 ($0.0000400 / MB).

2012: 2 TB HDD for $157.27 ($0.0000786 / MB).

2014: 4 TB HDD for $109 ($0.0000367 / MB)

2024: 8 TB HDD for $111.98 ($0.0000140 / MB)

https://web.archive.org/web/20250318110739/http://jcmit.net/...

https://www.thecpuguide.com/pc/disk-price-history-hdd-ssd-pr...

China