
The The storage industry is in crisis for a couple of quarters and the latest financials from Micron Technology have made it crystal clear. TrendForce’s analysis of the NAND flash market, which follows that of the DRAM sector, not only confirms this, but reveals it recovery is not immediateallowing those who need to buy an SSD to do so at cheaper prices.
Attention However, it appears that the race to the bottom is slowing downtherefore, it is possible for prices to bottom out ahead of any eventual recovery.
Despite the Manufacturers of NAND flash memory are cutting back on productionthe market is still awash in chips because there is no demand from the drive sectors such as servers, notebooks and smartphones. Because of this, “TrendForce expects that The average selling price of NAND flash will continue to decrease in Q2 2023, although this decrease could narrow to 5% to 10%“.
Currently, according to analysts, the return to market equilibrium is associated with a further reduction in production by Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and other companies in the industry. TrendForce is convinced of this if demand remains stable, the average selling price of NAND flash could “recover” in Q4 2023.but if demand is weaker than expected, the situation will not change until 2024.
This is what TrendForce notes in this context The client SSD sector will see a price decline of 5 to 10% in the second quarter. “Currently, PC OEMs have managed to liquidate most of their component inventory and are now preparing for their mid-year sales events by lowering prices to eliminate inventory of PCIe 3.0 SSDs, which expire. In the meantime, PCIe 4.0 SSD prices continue to come under downward pressure due to slow acquisition of new customer orders,” writes TrendForce. Assuming a few quarters of declining prices in Q2 2023 they therefore fall off less strongly.
Also for the enterprise SSD sector, another drop in the average selling price by 8-13% is expected, as well as for UFS storage, while the price drop of eMMC for smartphones and similar devices will be 5-10%.