Samsung has been one of the largest suppliers of DDR4 memory chips for the longest time. It appears that the company has now made the decision to say farewell to this legacy technology and focus its resources on newer memory technologies.

A new report claims that Samsung is going to discontinue DDR4 production by the end of this year. The move aims to free up resources and manufacturing capacity for higher margin products like DDR5, LPDDR5 and HBM.

The report adds that Samsung will stop taking new orders for DDR4 memory chips by June this year. The final deliveries for 8GB and 16GB modules for laptops and desktops are expected to be shipped by December 2025.

Doing so will free up valuable manufacturing capacity for newer memory technologies that are also more profitable. DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory is utilized in almost all major consumer electronics while HBM modules are in extremely high demand for GPU and AI accelerators.

The economics of being in the DDR4 business may have finally stopped making sense for Samsung. DDR4 DRAM prices recently hit their lowest point since September 2023. The Chinese memory makers are also relentlessly competing in this segment. It's claimed that some have even been undercutting Samsung aggressively on pricing, offering DDR4 chips at 50% the cost of the Korean giant.

These new DDR4 chips have thus become cheaper even than some reused memory chips. Samsung can't possibly compete on pricing in such an environment, so the only step here was to end DDR4 production and focus on newer technologies instead.