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Claims from Micron's VP of marketing have rubbed gamers and enthusiasts the wrong way, after he seemed to suggest that closing the Crucial brand is good for consumers.
Micron announced late last year that it would kill off the Crucial Memory brand after nearly 30 years and shift its focus toward supporting data center clients. In a recent interview with WCCFTech, Christopher Moore argues that Micron's products will still trickle down to consumers because the company provides memory modules to major tech companies.
"Our viewpoint is that we are trying to help consumers around the world," Moore said. "We're just doing it through different channels." The memory shortage that prompted the shift, meanwhile, "is not a Micron issue," he adds. "It's an industry issue [and] a really unfortunate situation."
Commenters on WCCFTech are not convinced.
"So to summarize: Datacenter demand trumps client demand, money talks," one wrote.
"Unbelievably tone deaf comments," added another. "Catering to the consumer in a high demand environment would be something like: limited supply of current lines (say 10%) to maintain channel and not kill their market position."
Another said they "can't wait for this damned bubble to burst. But until then, the money line must go up, your average consumer be damned am I right?" And someone argued that Micron is "choosing AI over real people."
According to Moore, however, "there's just not enough supply to go around" at the moment.
Although Micron started building new fabrication lines years ago, they won't come online until 2027, and even then production won't affect supply until later that year at the earliest. That "means that for the average consumer, the DRAM shortages could persist for quite some time now, or at least until the AI demand starts to fade away," Moore says.