NAND Flash price crash predicted within the next year

At the 2018 Flash Memory Summit, Objective Analysis’ general director and semiconductor analyst, Jim Handy, confirmed that the NAND/Flash market was in a state of oversupply, predicting downward price corrections. This change is good news for SSD purchasers, as lower NAND prices will reduce the cost of SSD storage, as well as the flash component costs in mobile phones and a range of other digital devices. 

What is most noteworthy about Handy’s prediction is that the incoming price correction could be the largest that the industry has ever seen, characterising the pricing change like a collapse, rather than readjustment. Search Storage reports that Howard Marks, the founder and chief scientist at DeepStorage, has predicted a 50-60% decrease in NAND pricing over the next two years. 

This price decrease will be because of several factors, though it can all be summarised by NAND supplies are increasing at a faster rate than industry demand. Several Chinese manufacturers are now entering the NAND/Flash market while existing suppliers like Samsung, SK Hynix and Sandisk/Western Digital have worked to increase their manufacturing capacity during the recent NAND shortage. 

These factors are predicted to cause 2-3 years of oversupply within the NAND/Flash market. Jim Handy states that the introduction of Chinese manufacturers into the market will allow this oversupply to last for more than two years, which is the length of a typical period of oversupply within the NAND market. The introduction of QLC NAND will also lower the cost of some NAND-based products.