Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch

South Korea’s trucker strike has disrupted Samsung Electronics‘ chip production in China. The Korea International Trade Association (Kita) said a Korean company that produces isopropyl alcohol (IPA), a raw material for cleaning chip wafers, is facing complications in shipping to a Chinese company that in turn supplies wafers to chip manufacturers. Kita said in a statement that about 90 tonnes, or a week’s worth of shipments have been delayed.

KIOXIA announced sampling of the industry’s first XFM DEVICE ver. 1.0 compliant removable PCIe® attached, NVMe™ storage device in 256 GB and 512 GB models. With a new form factor and connector in small size to meet the specification of the JEDEC standard, the XFM DEVICE ver. 1.0 standard is designed to enhance next-generation mobile PCs, IoT devices and various embedded applications.

China approves SK Hynix's acquisition of Key Foundry. It has been about eight months since SK Hynix officially announced its plan to acquire Key Foundry. If SK Hynix embraces Key Foundry, it will leap forward to become the second-largest foundry in South Korea after Samsung Electronics. Production capacity is likely to nearly double compared to before. There is a high chance that SK Hynix will rank in the top 10 in the global foundry market.

Micron Technology, a major vendor of memory chips for PCs and smartphones, said on 30th of June that it now expects smartphone sales to be meaningfully lower than previously expected for the rest of 2022. The company said that consumer demand is slowing because of China lockdowns, the Russia-Ukraine war, and rising inflation.

SUPPLY TREND

NAND Flash 512Gb TLC Contract Price and Sufficiency, 2021 - 2022

NAND Sufficiency: Expected to be oversupply globally until end of 2022 due to regional conflicts and global inflation.
Price Trend: SSD contract price is expected to slightly decrease in July.

DDR4 8Gb 1G*8 3200MHz ASP and Sufficiency, 2021 - 2022

DRAM Sufficiency: Global demand is weaker, so a slight oversupply is expected to last until end of 2022.
Price Trend: Contract prices are expected to decrease slightly and will be close to the spot prices.

SUPPLY SIGNAL

	Type	Supply	Price
DRAM Module	DDR3	●	▼
	DDR4	●	▼
	DDR5	●	▼
Flash Storage	SLC	●	▂
	MLC	●	▂
	3D TLC (BiCS3)	●	▂
	3D TLC (BiCS4)	●	▼
	3D TLC (BiCS5)	●	▼

● Smooth supply ● Tight supply ▂ Flat ▲ Upward trend ▼ Downward trend

WORK WITH ADATA

While all supply gets back to normal, the lead-time of SLC and MLC products remains 12-14 weeks. We still encourage our customers to follow the standard lead-time for your inventory management.

As the industrial market is still relatively stable compared to the consumer market, the price trend will not have a significant dropping. It will be a mild adjustment in the coming few months.