On March 19th, according to a report by research firm TrendForce, the continuous rise in prices of SSDs and other storage devices has prompted several leading manufacturers to expand their production capacities.
With the expectation that NAND Flash prices will continue to rise into the second quarter, some suppliers are aiming to reduce losses, cut costs, and hope to return to profitability this year. Starting from March, Kioxia and Western Digital have proactively increased their production capacity utilization rates to nearly ninety percent, while other industry players have not significantly ramped up production.
It is reported that this expansion of production mainly focuses on 112-layer and some 2D products, with the potential to achieve profitability this year, further driving the year-on-year growth rate of NAND Flash industry supply to 10.9% in 2024.
TrendForce predicts that the increase in NAND Flash contract prices will converge to 10-15% from the second quarter onwards, and further decrease to 0-5% by the third quarter.
Prior to this, after more than a year of oversupply, Samsung Electronics' NAND flash selling prices were once on par with costs. Consequently, they planned to negotiate with major clients to bring prices back to reasonable levels.
Presently, the situation is such that spot prices for NAND have been consistently rising, with prices for some categories already exceeding January 2022 levels, and the market remains permeated with anxiety stemming from production cuts.
