At the Flash Memory Summit, Objective Analysis CEO and semiconductor analyst Jim Handy confirmed that the NAND flash memory market was in a state of oversupply and predicted downward price corrections. This change is good news for SSD buyers as lower NAND prices will reduce storage costs for SSDs and the cost of flash components on mobile phones and other digital devices.
Analysts predict a sharp drop in NAND storage prices over the next 2 years.
Above all, Handy’s forecast that the price correction could be the biggest the industry has ever seen, with a fall in prices and not just a new adjustment like this year. Search Storage reports that Howard Marks, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of DeepStorage, predicted a 50-60% decline in NAND storage prices over the next two years.
This price decline is due to several factors, although it can be summarised in a single decisive factor that the production of NAND memories is growing faster than the demand from industry. Several Chinese manufacturers are now entering the NAND/Flash market while existing vendors such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Sandisk/Western Digital have worked to increase their production capacity during the recent shortage of NAND/Flash memory.
It would also affect hard drives.
These factors are expected to cause oversupply in the NAND/Flash market for 2 to 3 years. This is very strange because we would go from problems with NAND flash memory stocks to an oversupply.
Lower prices are also expected to have a significant impact on the hard drive market, as lower-cost SSD-based storage solutions will make it more difficult to sell hard drives to businesses and laptops.