While the word on the street is that the chip industry is mobilising for a price war, cooler heads are saying that is incredibly unlikely. 

The prelude to the rumours are that memory chipmakers reported strong profits this year thanks to better-than-expected demand for PCs and servers. Analysts believe industry conditions will remain favourable in 2015, forecasting similar market dynamics. But the war talk was started when Samsung announced it was going to invest $14.67 billion. This means that it could undercut everyone by pumping out shedloads of chips and squeeze rivals like SK Hynix and Micron.

However Samsung has ruled out a price war to break out next year even though it is ramping up capacity. Samsung Chief executive Kwon Oh-hyun said he was waiting to see how things will go next year.

“But there definitely will not be any game of chicken," Kwon Oh-hyun said. 

This is a pity as we just invested in a set of rules, polyhedral dice and a couple of battery hens. It is unlikely that Samsung would want a price war next year. Firstly, its facility will not begin until 2017 and secondly when it comes online Samsung will want all the margins it can get.