{"id":889500,"date":"2026-10-21T02:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T02:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889500\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T02:00:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T02:00:24","slug":"smartphone-oems-are-now-resorting-to-recycling-dram-that-is-5-to-6-years-old-to-push-up-shipment-volumes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889500\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartphone OEMs Are Now Resorting To Recycling DRAM That Is 5 To 6 Years Old To Push Up Shipment Volumes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who would have guessed that the AI-driven ‘new normal’ would suddenly turn the entire consumer electronics industry much more environment-conscious, diligently ripping off older DRAM and recycling it to pinch pennies? <\/p>\n

And yet, this is exactly what a host of Chinese smartphone OEMs are now doing to try to push up their shipment volumes from near-stasis levels.<\/p>\n

Base smartphone variants from Chinese OEMs are now much more environment-friendly, courtesy of their copious recycled DRAM content<\/p>\n

According to a fresh report out of Asia, Chinese smartphone OEMs are currently reconfiguring recovered components from used models into newer ones, especially DRAM. In fact, some OEMs are devising plans to populate their base models using only recycled DRAM<\/a> from smartphones that might be 5 to 6 years old.<\/p>\n

This DRAM-focused recycling frenzy has helped many Chinese smartphone OEMs recover their production targets that were aggressively slashed towards the beginning of the summer amid a historic squeeze in the price and availability of LPDDR products.<\/p>\n

While the process of recycling DRAM is fairly straightforward, and involves steps such as separation, testing, and re-soldering onto the new circuit board, some deterioration in performance is inevitable, especially given the age of the memory products that are now being recycled.<\/p>\n

Consider that an entire market has now popped up in China’s Hwachang Bay that is wholly dedicated to recycling DRAM from older electronics products.<\/p>\n

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We noted recently that a square millimeter of the older 1b DRAM is now costlier than a similar-sized TSMC N2 wafer<\/a>, despite the fact that the latter is much more difficult to fabricate. What’s more, Google has designed special hardware adapters to allow previous-gen memory solutions, such as the DDR4 modules ripped out of retired servers<\/a>, to be connected to the new generation of its AI servers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we reported earlier today that major PC manufacturers such as Lenovo, HP, and Dell have already signed long-term agreements (LTAs)<\/a> with memory vendors for 2027 supply, leaving smartphone OEMs further exposed to the vagaries of the spot market. Of course, these PC manufacturers can rely on predictable corporate upgrade cycles to cushion the impact of rising memory prices, while smartphone OEMs have no such fallback mechanisms to dampen the memory cycle’s vicissitudes.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Rohail
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\n\t\t\t\t\tAbout the author<\/a>: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile<\/a> team since 2025.
\n
\nAs an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover.
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\nWhen I’m not writing, I’m traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tFollow Wccftech on Google<\/a> to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who would have guessed that the AI-driven ‘new normal’ would suddenly turn the entire consumer electronics industry much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[165,74],"class_list":["post-889500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}