[throwaway48476]

What a disaster for Micron. Having a consumer facing brand is 'crucial' for brand awareness. Micron is the smallest of the big 3 in DRAM and the only one in America. They're going to be swallowed up and replaced by CXMT.

[httpz]

The brand aware "consumers" are really just DIY PC builders, which is relatively a small number. Enterprise DRAM business is doing so great that Micron just doesn't see the consumer market is worth chasing.

This is bad for consumers though since DRAM prices are skyrocketing and now we have one less company making consumer DRAM.

[theelous3]

The people who occupy the b2b ram buying kind of jobs are not aliens from another planet. Brand awareness in consumer markets, especially ones that are so closely tied to people's jobs (nerds gonna nerd) is going to have a knock on effect. It's not like a clothing brand or something.

[michaelt]

Sometimes reputation and suchlike in the consumer market can directly boost your B2B business. Consumers and professionals alike will look at backblaze drive reliability figures.

Other times professionals will sneer at a consumer product, or a consumer product can diminish your brand. Nobody's wiring a data centre with Monster Cables, and nobody's buying Cisco because they were impressed by Linksys.

[lotsofpulp]

Not that it invalidates your point, but Cisco sold Linksys in 2013.

[0manrho]

Yes, but the consumer brand has to have a good reputation for that to pan out positively in B2B. Crucial has a decent reputation, but the problem is that there hasn't been any innovation in the consumer DRAM market for 2 decades that wasn't driven by/copied from the enterprise sector. The difference between a Crucial DIMM and a Micron Unbuffered dimm is which brands sticker they put on it, and maybe a heatsink and tighter binning/QA. That's not unique to Micron/Crucial. Aside from "Moar RGB", what innovation has happened in this space in the consumer side of things that isn't just a mirror of the enterprise side (eg DDR4 to DDR5)? XPO/XMP? That's Intel/AMD dictating things to DRAM companies. So what impression really are people meant to carry over from Crucial to Micron in this instance? How is Micron meant to leverage the Crucial brand in this space to stand out above others?

Similar story on the SSD side of things regarding reputation/innovation, especially when you consider that Crucial SSD's are no more "micron" in a hardware sense than a Corsair one built using Micron flash (support is a different matter), as the controllers were contracted out to 3rd parties (Phison) and the flash used was entry level/previous gen surplus compared to what's put in enterprise. The demands and usecase for consumers and even prosumers/enthusiasts are very different and in general substantially less than on the enterprise side of things with SSDs, and that gulf is only growing wider. So again, what is meant to carry over? How can Micron leverage Crucial to stand out when the consumer market just doesn't have the demands to support them making strong investment to stand out?

Frankly, taking what you say farther, I think if this is what they want to do (having consumer brand recognition that can carry over in some meaningful way to B2B), then sundowning crucial now (given the current supply issues) and then eventually re-entering the market when things return to some sense of "normal" as Micron so that both consumer and enterprise brands are the same brand, "Micron", makes much more sense.

[0manrho]

Considering how many people don't realize Crucial is a Micron brand, or that Micron components are in a lot of non-crucial consumer brand products, I'd argue it wasn't that crucial.

Especially considering that there's little innovation in the consumer DRAM and SSD spaces vs their enterprise counterparts that Micron can flex their talent in.

[dboreham]

Micron had infinite brand awareness in the electronics industry long before they made SSDs. Heck they don't even use their own name for those products. They've been a memory vendor for more than 40 years and they're the only vendor with US domestic memory fabs. Something tells me their future will be just fine. Disclosure: Micron stock holder.

[throwaway48476]

Every low end IoT box made in china will be 'encouraged' to use CXMT aided by state subsidies. This will shrink the market for market price DRAM. When the AI bubble pops DRAM makers will discover the importance of diversification.

[ajross]

> What a disaster for Micron.

Almost certainly this is because of a windfall for Micron, at least in the short term. Datacenter memory demand is going through the roof, and that was where margins were highest already. It makes no sense to continue to try to milk a consumer brand that can be sold at, what, a 20% markup over generics?

Most likely Micron was planning this forever, and the current market conditions are such that it's time to pull the trigger and retool everything for GPU memory.

[Spooky23]

Micron is chasing AI glory. Their stock valuation has no room for consumer business, which is a distraction.

You can’t think about companies like it’s 2024. We’re in a gilded age with unlimited corruption… Anything can happen. They can sign a trillion dollar deal with OpenAI, get acquired by NVidia, merge with Intel, get nationalized by Trump, etc.

[drdec]

> Micron is chasing AI glory.

Sounds to me like they are using the tried and true method of selling equipment to the people rushing for gold

[deathanatos]

Perhaps, but when the gold rush is over and the demand for shovels falls, you've now salted the earth you're returning to.

[Auracle]

People aren’t going to care. They’ll re-enter the market, perhaps with a new name, and people will have no qualms buying their stuff.

[mrcwinn]

You’re exactly wrong. In the race to supply AI data center, there is no “consumer” (in the sense I think you mean) making or influencing a buying decision. Without a clear path to increase supply, why take $1 when you can have $6 or $7?

[benatkin]

That's planned, not a disaster. They've deprioritized brand awareness. Siemens for instance doesn't need brand awareness, if they did, they'd pick an english name.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

https://www.biwintech.com/