Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch

Samsung was by far the biggest source of leading- and lagging-edge capacity at the end of 2022 according to Knometa Research's new Global Wafer Capacity 2023 report. Not only being the top supplier of DRAM and NAND flash memory products in the market, the company is also one of the biggest producers of advanced logic products, including SoCs for the fabless semiconductor sector and low-power, high-performance application processors for its own smartphones.

WD has released its highest capacity consumer drive with the 22TB (*) My Book desktop HDD, which is able to consolidate data from a variety of users’ storage devices into one organized and easy to access location. The company’s My Book Duo series is also available in a 44TB (*) capacity, equipped with RAID-optimized company drives that enables maximum speed and capacity. My Book Duo can be reconfigured to RAID-1 for redundancy (data mirroring) or used as 2 independent drives (JBOD) with the included software.

SK Hynix’s 2022 operating profit plunged 44% as its first operating loss in over ten years, despite revenue increasing by 4% compared to 2021. The loss result was compounded by lowered demand for memory chips and a significant drop in memory pricing, which also reflected the overall downward spiral of the PC industry during the second half of 2022. However, the company forecasts market conditions to gradually improve in the latter part of 2023 and expects to see a quick turnaround, with the world’s best technologies for DDR5 for data centers and 176-layer NAND flash-based enterprise SSD.

Micron is by far the biggest owner of offshore IC manufacturer capacity. The company operates 12 fabs outside of the US and accounts for 65% of the 2.6 million wafers produced overseas. Yet recently Micron announced that it will return to the US and build new fabs in Idaho and New York. However, Micron has also claimed to slow down its local capacity expansion as global memory business is weak, especially when the cost of memory mass-production in the US is much higher than that of its fabs in Taiwan, Japan and Singapore.

SUPPLY TREND

WW SSD Shipment

W.W. SSD Shipment: Worldwide SSD shipment is expected to grow gradually.

WW DRAM Output

Global output is more conservative because of weak demand.

NAND Flash 512Gb TLC Contract Price and Sufficiency, 2022 - 2023

NAND Sufficiency: NAND Flash expected to maintain oversupply globally until the end of Q2.
Price Trend: NAND Flash price trend is expected to be flat in Q1 and dip slightly lower in Q2 and Q3.

DDR4 8Gb 1G*8 3200MHz ASP and Sufficiency , 2022-2023

DRAM Sufficiency: Global demand is weak, oversupply is expected to last until Q2.
Price Trend: 8Gb contract price is expected to trend lower and hit the spot low in Q1, then has a chance to stay beneath spot low starting from Q3.

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

The memory module market is seeing a pricing downtrend, but it's expected to be less severe than recent months, and with a 4-week lead time, planning orders is crucial for smooth production.

The industrial flash market has had a less significant price correction, with stable prices due to strong demand. Plan ahead for production needs in these market conditions and contact us with any questions or concerns.

Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch