According to industry analyst firm TrendForce, coming via the Storage Newsletter, the memory market (including DRAM and NAND flash) is still in a state of oversupply till Q4 2020, and SSD prices could drop significantly soon by the end of this year.
Storage Newsletter cites that the average price for NAND flash memory will drop another 10% by end of this year i.e. Q4 2020 (average selling price-ASP), and then decrease 15% more in the first quarter of 2021. This has been caused due to the imbalance between supply and demand, and also because of the high amounts of inventory/chip stocks, and large NAND wafer production.
The demand for SSDs has also declined in the server and enterprise market.
Apart from that, Huawei has not being able to buy foreign NAND due to US sanctions, and other clients have already stocked up on NAND so they have high inventory levels.
Soon we can expect high-capacity NVMe SSDs to become incredibly cheaper than before. This is great news for those gamers and customers looking to buy a new SSD, given that solid-state drives are slowly becoming part of the recommended system spec for some games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and even other PC titles like World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and Marvel’s Avengers (110 GB SSD space recommended) etc.
SSDs are fantastic because they’re blisteringly fast as compared to conventional hard drives. But that performance comes at a price, literally. But recently SSDs have already reached very competitive levels of pricing. We can sometimes find 1TB NVMe SSD for almost as low as $100 on a good sale.
Recently, Western Digital announced its first M.2 SSD based on PCI Express 4.0 interface of the WD Black gaming line: SN850. The device promises speeds of up to 7GB / s, 1 million IOPS and is sold in denominations of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB. Like the previous SN750, the unit is initially available without a heatsink, while a new version will arrive in the first quarter of next year with a heat sink and RGB LEDs.
In addition, Crucial recently expanded its P2 SSD range with new, higher capacity models. In fact, the low-end unit series has gained the 1TB and 2TB models, offering gamers a good compromise between good speed, high capacity and low price.
“With regards to DRAM, the market is primarily concerned with the mobile DRAM and server DRAM categories, which account for the majority of DRAM bit consumption. In terms of mobile DRAM, the preemptive inventory pull by Huawei has quickly alleviated the three major DRAM suppliers’ pressure to destock their inventories.
With regards to NAND flash, although preemptive stock-up demand from branded clients similarly provided some support for NAND flash ASP, the high level of supply bits and high customer inventory levels at the moment have led to an oversupply situation that is more evident than in the DRAM market.
Owing to aggressive NAND flash demand from Chinese smartphone brands, the decline in eMMC and UFS ASP is expected to narrow to a 3-7% Q/Q drop in 4Q20. Likewise, the continually rising supply of NAND flash wafers will likely result in a nearly 20% Q/Q decline in wafer ASP.
As for SSD, owing to weakening demand from server manufacturers, enterprise SSD ASP is expected to drop by 10-15% Q/Q. Overall NAND flash ASP is projected to drop by about 10% in 4Q20.” via the Storage Newsletter.
Stay tuned for more!
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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