"1Q NAND Prices to Rise Up to 20%... Memory Market's Spring Approaches"

TrendForce Forecast
Prices Likely to Be Determined by 'Enterprise SSD' Market

Prices of memory semiconductor NAND flash (hereinafter NAND) are expected to rise by up to 20% in the first quarter of this year.

On the 9th, Taiwanese market research firm TrendForce predicted that the average selling price (ASP) of NAND would increase by 15-20% in the first quarter of this year, following a 13-18% rise in the fourth quarter of last year compared to the previous quarter.

The projected price increase rates by NAND type are 18-23% for embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), universal flash storage (UFS), and enterprise solid-state drives (SSD), 15-20% for consumer SSDs, and 8-13% for 3D NAND wafers.

SK Hynix's world tallest 238-layer 4D NAND and solution products.
[Photo by SK Hynix]

TrendForce explained, "The first quarter is traditionally a period of low demand, but buyers are continuing to increase purchases of NAND products to secure safe inventory levels," adding, "Suppliers aiming to minimize losses are pushing for price increases."

However, they added, "If demand growth falls short of expectations, the price increase may ease in the second half of the year," and "Future price hikes depend on the revival of enterprise SSD procurement."

Due to the impact of shrinking front-end IT demand amid the global economic downturn, NAND prices, which had been declining for more than two years, shifted to a full-fledged upward trend starting in the fourth quarter of last year. This is interpreted as a result of the production cuts by major memory companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix taking full effect, driving prices up.

According to market research firm DRAMeXchange, the fixed transaction price of general-purpose NAND flash products (128Gb 16Gx8 MLC) for memory cards and USB in December recorded $4.33, up 6.02% from the previous month. NAND prices began to rise starting in October last year, increasing 1.59% in October and 5.41% in November, continuing the upward trend.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.