Next year will be really tough in terms of pricing, which, with the constant demand and zero supply of key products like processors or GPUs, will be lining up until the middle of the year. The NAND Flash won’t help either and will leave an uptrend that doesn’t seem to stop just yet.
GDDR memory and general RAM on the rise, PC memory will stay flat
It is not surprising what will happen in 2021, because when the stock, supply and demand stabilize, we will face the first consequences of those months that we have left behind. And is that according to TrendForce, we will see several scenarios for the Q1. First we have to talk about PC memory, the second about memory VRAM GDDR5 and GDDR6
From the start, production should be adjusted again by reducing it by 9%, which will influence whether PC makers keep their inventories low. And is Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron They haven’t increased module production in two quarters, that is, they’ve been adjust ing the stock for six months.
The relation between supply and demand seems to remain more or less the same, which will produce stability and gradually the supply will be lower than the demand, which should lead to a rise in prices by the end of the year. next year.
The price of NAND FLASH in general will increase, SSD, GPU and consoles included
Here, we must take into account GPUs and consoles, without forgetting the demand of minors. GDDR stocks are really tight so an increase of 5 and 10%. The problem is that currently this type of memory shares the lithographic process with RAM for smartphones, which means that with the growing demand for smartphones, more production is allocated to them than for GPUs.
The 20nm as well as the 1Xnm from major manufacturers do not offer all the supply needed for such demand, even though it is mature lithographic processes, so the production and compliance rate for this type of devices will always be unsatisfactory, suffering from this type of VRAM the largest rise in the NAND Flash market.
As with the rest of NAND Flash, we must focus on DDR3 and SSDs, where we see that SK Hynix no longer produces 2 GB of DDR3 memory and Samsung has changed its lithographic process for this type of memory, mainly because it will be shutting down production shortly and want to allocate resources to other areas.
SSDs with the introduction of more disks with QLC and 128 layers may increase their price, mainly because they will be primarily intended for high performance disks, while the 144 layers will be offered for higher capacity, c ie higher capacity SSD to compete with newer hard drives.
But after the news and if the title still does not adjust, it is possible that the price will drop for the second half of the year, it will all depend on whether Intel presents its PLCs and misaligns the market and how it reacts to the announcement.