TrendForce has revised its NAND price expectations for the third quarter of 2022, and according to its findings, the outlook is favorable for consumers . The NAND oversupply appears to be hitting harder than anticipated, meaning prices for products like SSDs are poised to drop by 8 to 13%, compared to the previously expected 3 to 8%.
TrendForce attributes the sharpest price drop to a more disappointing second quarter in sales. A lag in demand, coupled with ongoing innovation in NAND flash manufacturing and process design, contributed to the decline. Increased production of customer-centric, 176-layer QLC SSDs and the anticipated market volume expansion by YMTC have also intensified price competition among manufacturers.
The NAND Flash is going to have to start being liquidated with a price drop
Inventory of NAND-based product materials continues to rise due to lower demand. These materials have become a risk factor for the supply chain because warehousing them represents a cost. The slowness of distributors to reduce stock levels, coupled with customers' decreased purchase frequency, is causing inventory problems that have also spread to manufacturing. As a result, systems integrators have had to reduce their third-quarter orders to absorb unsold material inventory dating back to first-quarter purchases.
Enterprise SSDs are also seeing a decline. The general economic downturn has curbed full device purchases in all environments except high-performance computing. This leads TrendForce to believe that enterprise SSD market prices will decline by 5-10% in QXNUMX.
eMMC products, present in low-cost consumer electronics and IoT devices, will follow the trend of oversupply at the customer level. The same goes for UFS-based products such as smartphones, memory cards, and USB drives.
Despite reduced demand in the NAND flash storage market, it seems that storage in general is experiencing a particular crisis. The hard drive sector also saw a drop in demand, reaching 33% year-over-year. Given all this, experts predict that the third quarter of this year will be the best time to buy a new hard drive or SSD due to the anticipated price decreases.
Source: Tom's Hardware
