Samsung estimates record-breaking $13 billion profits and says memory apocalypse tainted prices are 'inevitable'

You know what they say: New year, more doom and gloom about the memory supply crisis. As it's January, we're also going to start hearing about how big tech fared financially during the final quarter of 2025—and obviously, many of these massive corporations are doing far better than anyone who just wants a reasonably priced upgrade for their gaming PC.

Case in point, Samsung Electronics is already estimating that its final quarter operating profits for 2025 is about "20 trillion Korean won." That's well over 13 billion USD or 10 billion GBP—and almost threefold what Samsung made during 2024's fourth quarter.

There is a bit more nuance to be gleaned beyond that eye-watering figure, though. To begin with, Samsung's full earnings guidance offers the estimated range of "19.9 trillion to 20.1 trillion Korean won" for operating profits and "92 trillion to 94 trillion Korean won" for sales. Yeah, okay, that is still a lot of won.

The guidance goes on to note that only offering ranges doesn't square with Korean disclosure regulations, hence the '20 trillion Korean won' figure. Samsung explains this represents "the median of the estimate ranges." That said, both ends of these ranges still suggest Samsung has made a dizzying amount of profit, far exceeding the 17.57 trillion won company record set back in Q3 of 2018.

Whichever way you slice it, the memory apocalypse doesn't exactly seem to be hurting the company—at least, not yet. That said, both SK Hynix and Samsung itself have reportedly told cloud service partners to expect their server memory prices to increase by as much as 70% more than Q4 2025, according to The Korea Economic Daily.

As this news most directly affects cloud providers such as Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services, I'm not exactly shedding a tear. However, there's potentially more bad news on the way for anyone even vaguely entertaining the idea of buying new tech this year. For instance, TrendForce predicts DRAM prices will increase up to 60% by the end of Q1 2026. It's not unexpected, but I am still wincing—and it may only get worse before it gets better.

During CES 2026, Samsung co-CEO T M Roh told Reuters the memory supply crisis affects consumer electronics beyond RAM or system storage. He wouldn't rule out increasing prices for products such as home appliances, smartphones, or televisions, saying experiencing some impact from surging memory prices is "inevitable." However, Roh also claimed the company is working with its partners towards strategies that aim to curtail some of this.

President and head of global marketing Wonjin Lee also told Bloomberg, "There’s going to be issues around semiconductor supplies, and it’s going to affect everyone. Prices are going up even as we speak. Obviously, we don’t want to convey that burden to the consumers, but we’re going to be at a point where we have to actually consider repricing our products.”

Panic-buying is still definitely not the way to go. However, when it comes to upgrades that would give my gaming rig just a little more room to breathe, even I keep thinking back to Kingston's Cameron Crandall's words from December: "Do it now and [don't] wait, because prices are going to continue to go up." Happy new year, indeed…