Business. Business never changes. Whether you’re for Keynes or Hayek, some truths just can’t be escaped: and the one based on the market tending to equilibrium between the forces of supply and demand is oft times almost akin to a law of physics – other times, not so much. This time, it appears as if the market forces are steering NAND prices through the roof. The causes? Varied, though you probably carry one of them in your pocket most of the time. We earlier reported surging prices in the DRAM market, spurred by the Note 7 fiasco and increased production of that smartphone’s competitors (and Samsung’s own products) to fill the gaping hole left by its forcible market removal. But not only by DRAM are smartphones powered – they also make use of NAND flash.
That is one of the causes for the recent surge in NAND pricing – smartphone inventory demands of flash-based memory have driven the manufacturer’s stocks to the red line. To this, one should add the success of the SSD market as being one of NAND’s pricing own worst enemies – increasing demand for SSDs, which in Q2 2016 achieved 33.705 million units (nearly 10 million units and 41.2% year-over-year higher and up 9.5% from Q1, means that demand is ever increasing – and manufacturing capabilities, on the other hand, are not. And with recent woes in rolling out of 3D NAND, on which companies like Toshiba and Western Digital (SanDisk owner) where banking to increase their manufacturing capabilities, only serve to exacerbate the problems. Until these companies sort out their BiCS 3D NAND production, NAND shortage might drag out until mid-to-late next year.
As a result, DRAMeXchange reported that the average price of MLC SSDs rose this quarter between 6%-10%, while TLC SSDs also rose 6%-9%. higher prices are great for NAND vendors, who are raking in record revenues (DRAMeXchange reports a 19.6% increase), who are banking on lower supply to increase pricing (thus stifling demand, which eventually downgrades so much that production – and therefore supply – is again higher than demand, which in turn drives the prices back down, which leads to greater demand from tech-savvy customers who don’t want to bank on ye old HDDs… And on and on). Eventually, with new 3D NAND fabs kicking into full production, pricing is (probably) coming down again – but many analysts are predicting SSD prices to increase 20-25% over the next few months, and it will likely be 2018 before prices are driven back down, if it even happens (since price-fixing after surges is, unfortunately, a thing).
Bottom-line: if you’re planning on buying an SSD, the time is now.
