A few days ago, Western Digital announced that together with Kioxia, they have seen that a huge shipment of materials for the manufacture of flash memories has arrived contaminated. Almost seven million terabytes will not be able to be manufactured and that means an increase in the price of SSDs in the short term according to a letter that Western Digital has sent to its partners.
Shortly after the news, it was assumed that the loss of that amount of flash memory would cause disruptions in global NAND markets. Shortages and stock problems would very possibly trigger a global increase in prices of SSDs and SD cards. Now this has been confirmed, as WDC has communicated it to its partners.
Western Digital warns of a price increase
In the letter Western Digital sent, he warned that costs have increased significantly in the short term and that the company was going to immediately increase the price of all Flash products. The contaminated materials accident resulted in the loss of an enormous amount of NAND flash memory, enough to cause a worldwide shortage given the number of people involved.
At the time of the accident it was reported that WDC was responsible for the 6,5 exabytes of memory leak, but it was unknown how much his partner Kioxia had lost. Both companies produce together around the 35% of all NAND memories of the world. Analysts assume that once the entire amount of NAND lost is accounted for, it would probably be about 14 exabytes of NAND flash.
When the accident occurred, Trendforce predicted that there would be a 5 to 10 percent price increase. Now WDC has confirmed that this is happening, but what is new is that Digitimes reports that other flash providers will also raise their prices next to WDC. It is assumed that it would be a situation of lower supply and high demand that would lead to an increase in final prices, at least in the short term.
