It’s funny how the semiconductor industry works and how close it is between itself and its subsidiaries. While the world needs chips, raw materials, and some key compounds to bring prices down, NAND Flash was on the opposite path in bringing them down. Now that the first are starting to appear, the second are coming and changing the third, because according to what has leaked, we are facing the beginning of something problematic for users: SSD prices will increase.
The predictions will fail, and not because they were poorly executed, but because, just as the pandemic was unpredictable to almost anyone in this world, what happened in the factories of Western Digital and KIOXIA
The price of 512 GB wafers is increasing
We are of course referring to the wafers which are intended for chips with a capacity of 512 GB and more precisely for those which integrate TLC technology. According to the chart presented, the price in December per chip was at $4.1whereas at the end of February it had already reached no less than $4.4 per unit.
This means that in the absence of a month to renegotiate the contracts, the price has already increased by 7%, but this is only a sample. Sources say that the price of 128GB and 256GB TLC chip wafers have also increased, hence the mistake made by Western Digital and KIOXIA in losing 6.5 exabyte
Some manufacturers like Lenovo via their product manager have already slipped that if you want an SSD then you have to hurry to acquire it, another symptom that the escalation has begun.
How high will SSD prices go?
Well, we don’t mean to be alarmists, but there are rumors that manufacturers including WD and Micron have been sounding the alarm to increase them between a 10% and 25%. This has not yet been translated because the contracts must be signed within the next two weeks for the Q2 of 2022
The problem is that now April is just around the corner, a season where normalcy has been restored after the virus has always been one of the big sellouts for the NAND Flash industry, so it’s likely that as we we said at the time, the problems of WD and KIOXIA are interpreted by their rivals following the increase in price to generate more advantages and at the same time to be able to compete by leaving the price just below the one that both companies sign.
Therefore, you still have time to buy your SSD at a decent price before the price hike starts and get rid of the speculation with it.
