Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch
May 2026
Union rally causes Samsung fab production to plummet by 58% during night shift — over 40,000 people attended rally for better pay and bonuses
• The disruption was caused by a large union rally, nearly one‑third of Samsung’s semiconductor fab workforce, showing that even a short labor action can have an immediate and measurable impact on highly automated semiconductor operations. A prolonged strike could undermine Samsung’s lead in next‑generation memory (such as AI‑related chips) and potentially drive customers toward competitors like SK hynix, while also pushing prices higher across the industry.
Kioxia, Solidigm and SanDisk invests in Nanya Technology
• The move reflects a capital‑light expansion strategy for the companies: instead of direct fab investment, they gain strategic influence, supply visibility, and ecosystem resilience through financial participation. By backing Nanya’s 10nm‑class DRAM roadmap (DDR5 and LPDDR5), Kioxia and SanDisk position themselves closer to next‑generation memory technologies needed for high‑performance computing, enterprise storage, and AI accelerators.
SK hynix Begins Supply of 321-layer QLC NAND Up to 2TB cSSD
• This move marks a major milestone in ultra‑high‑layer NAND commercialization. The new product, PQC21, is positioned as a next‑generation storage solution for the AI PC era, targeting systems that require high capacity, strong performance, and improved power efficiency. QLC NAND’s share of the global cSSD market is expected to grow from 22% in 2025 to 61% by 2027 according to IDC projections. The supply launch supports SK hynix’s strategy to secure leadership in QLC‑based client, full‑scale shipments to Dell Technologies began in April 2026, with SK hynix planning to broaden supply to additional global OEMs over time.
Micron begins volume shipment of HBM4 36GB 12H
•This line is designed for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI platform. HBM4 achieves pin speeds exceeding 11 Gb/s, delivering aggregate bandwidth greater than 2.8 TB/s, which represents a 2.3× bandwidth increase over HBM3E.To support future capacity scaling, The firm also samples HBM4 48GB 16‑high (16H) stacks, enabling a 33% increase in capacity per HBM placement versus the 36GB 12H product, demonstrating advanced packaging capabilities.
SUPPLY TREND
2026 – 2027 Worldwide NAND Flash Output
demand for legacy‑node SSDs is minimal within overall SSD shipments. Rapid expansion in AI‑related applications in 2026 is expected to drive sustained growth in demand for mainstream advanced‑node 3D‑type SSD products.
2026-2027 Worldwide DRAM Output
2025-2026 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
Flash Sufficiency: CSP-driven AI expansion caused severe NAND shortages starting from Q3’25, and this might last during the entire 2026.
Price Trend: overall NAND flash price rose sharply in Q4’25 with enterprise and cloud service provider (CSP) demand surging—driven by AI infrastructure expansion and server upgrades. The market condition is projected to continue in 2026, sustaining NAND flash prices at a high level.
2025-2026 DDR4 Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
DRAM Sufficiency: Supply has come under significant pressure from Q3’25 through 2026 1H, as manufacturers phase out DDR4 production and reallocate capacity toward high-demand applications from the CSPs. This shift has led to a pronounced tightening in overall DRAM availability.
Price Trend: DDR4 price has risen sharply across both spot and contract markets, driven by CSP-led demand absorbing supply and growing HBM allocation crowding out commodity DRAM capacity.
Insights
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How to Choose Industrial SSD for Medical Devices?
Medical devices are rapidly becoming more digital. From medical imaging systems, patient monitoring devices, endoscopy systems, and automated dispensing cabinets to healthcare edge gateways, an increasing number of healthcare applications must continuously record medical images, sensor data, operation logs, alarm events, and system status while supporting diagnostic and treatment workflows.
What Is an NVMe SSD?
Learn what an NVMe SSD is, how NVMe differs from SATA SSDs, and why NVMe storage is ideal for automation, industrial systems, and high-frequency data logging.
What Is ECC DRAM?
Learn what ECC DRAM is, how error correction works, and why it matters for data integrity, system stability, networking security, and mission-critical computing.
How to Choose NVR Storage: Key Factors for Efficient Surveillance Systems
NVR storage is not only about capacity planning. It also affects data integrity and long-term system reliability. For AI NVR and 24/7 recording environments, storage devices must handle heavy write workloads, RAID rebuilding, and continuous recording. As a result, choosing between HDD vs. SSD and selecting the right surveillance SSD have become critical for modern surveillance deployment.
What Is the SSD Temperature Range?
Temperature is the silent limiter of every SSD, and the SSD temperature range is both a performance spec as well as a reliability spec. Under sustained load, NVMe firmware tracks a composite temperature and will start to throttle lightly or heavily. So, write throughput drops hard and latency spikes. Heat also speeds charge leakage inside NAND, which accelerates retention loss. The effect worsens as cells age from program/erase wear. Thus, you burn endurance faster and raise data-retention trouble when the drive later remains unpowered.
Garbage Collection in Industrial SSDs: What You Need to Know
Garbage collection in SSDs is the controller's quiet cleanup job. It compacts still-valid pages into new space and erases blocks that are now mostly junk. That might sound weird until you remember NAND flash can't overwrite a programmed page. It must erase first, and erase happens at the block level, not per page. So, updates become "write elsewhere, then clean later."
