The market has been experiencing a period of low RAM and SSD prices due to high inventory and weak consumer demand, but this may end sooner than expected after manufacturers like Micron announced production cuts. But this phase may end sooner than expected after manufacturers such as Micron announced production cuts, and TrendForce noted in a recent report that the current round of memory cuts has continued from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the present. The industry’s mainstream average wafer contract price has dropped significantly, and some manufacturers are close to losing money.
File photo (from: Crucial)
As NAND flash prices plummeted last month, many reports speculated that SSD prices would dip further. While TrendForce speculates that this situation is unlikely to change soon, Micron’s announcement last week to reduce DRAM and NAND Flash production has changed analysts’ expectations.
It is reported that Micron, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build giant fabs in the U.S., has formed a three-legged battle with Samsung and SK Hynix. Shortly after Micron’s official announcement of the production cut, Armor Man also announced that it will cut 30% of its NAND Flash capacity starting this month.
On the whole, TrendForce believes that although DRAM production will drop, the drop will not be too big compared to NAND Flash.
But Micron’s announcement also means that the company’s plans to increase production of 232-layer NAND flash in the fourth quarter of this year have been put on hold — it will continue to focus on its 176-layer NAND flash product line throughout 2023.
The report notes that we expect to see more manufacturers follow through with production limits, given that only a massive reduction in production will reverse the overall supply-demand imbalance next year.
On the other hand, AMD and Intel are offering PCIe 5.0 SSD and DDR5 memory support on new platforms, and rising prices are not good news for the PC market.
If you are interested in assembling a new or upgraded PC in the near future, you should consider getting one at the right time. In particular, the Zen 4 Dragon 7000 series AM5 platform only supports DDR5 memory and is not DDR4 compatible like Intel’s 12th / 13th generation processors.
