In the impending third quarter of the year, NAND flash memory will become cheaper due to oversupply in the market trend strength. Similarly, SSDs that have it should also become cheaper.
The fall in prices only ran out of steam for a short time
The early-year forecast of sharply falling SSD prices was first followed in February by disillusionment from a customer perspective: An incident at the Kioxia and Western Digital factories, which together account for about a third of global NAND production, destroyed several exabytes and caused problems for a weeks-long production outage. The forecasts were quickly changed from lower to higher prices, but at least the local end-consumer market hardly felt any of that.
Price prediction for the third quarter of 2022
The new prognosis trend strength now clearly points in the direction of lower prices for NAND flash memory and products based on it such as SSDs. The short-term disruption in production is long over and factors such as rising inflation and a general drop in demand in the PC segment are leading to oversupply and full inventory.
Market researchers therefore currently assume that prices (spot prices) of NAND flash memory will fall by up to 5% in the third quarter. Contract prices for the purchase of whole wafers with NAND chips are even expected to drop by 5-10% and had already fallen in May, according to the report.
While enterprise SSD prices are expected to remain stable due to continued strong demand from hyperscalers, i.e. mainly large cloud data centers, customer SSD prices are expected to decline by around 3 to 8 %. In the mobile sector with Universal Flash Storage (UFS) and Embedded MultiMedia Card (eMMC) for products such as smartphones and tablets, prices are expected to fall in the same range of 3-8%. “Slow Smartphone Shipments and Declining Consumer Market Trends Remain Unchanged“, describe trend strength the current situation in this sector.
SSD prices in online retail are already falling
A look at the price comparison already shows a slight downward trend in SSD prices in the entry-level class: More and more offers start at 7 cents per gigabyte.
The downward trend is clearer in the high-end segment with fast (and more expensive) PCIe 4.0 SSDs. However, growing competitive pressure has ensured this for months. The new spearheads are SSDs with Phison E18 controller and 176-layer TLC-NAND from Micron, such as the Corsair MP600 Pro XT (test), Kingston KC3000 or Seagate FireCuda 530 (test). The older Samsung 980 Pro (test) and WD Black SN850 (test) top dogs are no longer the fastest and have become significantly cheaper. For currently just 120 euros (1TB model) or 12 cents per GB, both are price advice for enthusiasts who aren’t aiming for the absolute maximum in performance.
A faster successor to the WD SN850, the SN850X, is coming soon.
If you are currently looking for an SSD, you will find useful information in SSD buying advice from publishers and buying recommendations from the community.
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