News SSD prices predicted to skyrocket throughout 2024 — TrendForce market report projects a 50% price hike

[Admin]

A report from TrendForce anticipates a 50% increase in NAND flash prices in the near term, which will further boost SSD prices.

SSD prices predicted to skyrocket throughout 2024 — TrendForce market report projects a 50% price hike : Read more

 

[AgentBirdnest]

Oof, I'm wishing I'd bought a 2TB drive or two back in August, when they were $60...

 

[Co BIY]

How was production lowered ?

Did they close production lines ?

 

[atomicWAR]

How was production lowered ?

Did they close production lines ?

Yes Samsung made 20% cuts to production to nand in September for example. From my understanding this was meant to raise the prices of nand and thus SSDs/NVMe drives as they weren't happy with the prices trending so low. I saw this coming over the summer from the rumor mills and actually filled both mine and the wife's NVMe slots with either 2 or 4TB drives (four per board...x670e Taichi's) in July-> August. Now I'll wait til 8TB NVMe drives to hit 300 dollar price point or less and I'll likely upgrade our rigs again.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well, I'm sure glad that I bought my SSDs this year. I still have about 3½TB of unused NVMe gaming space so I should be just fine. I actually just bought a 1TB 2.5" SSD to resurrect an old craptop for $60CAD which is pretty decent, especially if it costs $90 six months from now.

I remember shaking my head when I saw a Crucial MX500 (only 500GB) for $65 on sale! I could never justify that because every test I've ever seen has had only negligible real-world performance differences between what could be called "the best" and what could be called "the worst".

The price differences weren't so negligible though.

 

[watzupken]

Feels like a paid "prediction" to stir people to rush out and buy SSDs so that they won't miss the "good" price now. While it is true they can reduce supply to try and bump prices up, you can only do so to some extent. Unless they are planning not to produce anything at all and leave their fabs and factories running at very low utilization rate. Either way will result in losses.

 

[cyrusfox]

Used market is usually immune to this... But I have bought a couple datacenter lemons
•Toshiba drives at well past the write warranty limit, 100+PB, still works well in some applications (Scratch drive, Xbox replacement drive), but not a trusted drive, still going though...

 

[JTWrenn]

This is straight price manipulation by samsung. We need more major players to really fight this out to get decent pricing. It all feels like a scam at this point.

 

[The_Werewolf]

Where were you guys when HD drive prices skyrocketed this year?

Anyway, if your baseline for prices are the top end brands, then you'll get a bad skew. It's like suggesting the price of laptops and PCs are going to skyrocket because Apple raised their prices.

 

[cyrusfox]

This is straight price manipulation by samsung. We need more major players to really fight this out to get decent pricing. It all feels like a scam at this point.

This is a huge multi billion dollar market, they would only cut production if they are in the red (selling at a lost).

As you can see above the NAND market is in a severe downturn, revenue is less than half of what was obtained during 2021, back to 2016 levels... When it cost more to make then you can sell it for, why would you make more of a depreciating commodity???
Current major players in the NAND market:

1. Samsung
2. Hynix
3. Solidigm (was Intel, Bought by Hynix)
4. Micron
5. Western Digital
6. Kioxia
7. Various Chinese manufacturers (YMTC most prominent)

This is a HUGE market with giant organizations already in the mix, yes there has been some consolidation (Solidigm bought by Hynix, Kioxia and WD future together is a bit more murkier)

 

[thestryker]

This has happened in every computing commodity market, but hopefully doesn't lead to more consolidation than we've already seen. DRAM and HDD markets both only have 3 primary players (Kingston is also pretty big, but I'm not sure how much of that is still DRAM so maybe 4) and we don't really want that here.

 

[cyrusfox]

This has happened in every computing commodity market, but hopefully doesn't lead to more consolidation than we've already seen. DRAM and HDD markets both only have 3 primary players (Kingston is also pretty big, but I'm not sure how much of that is still DRAM so maybe 4) and we don't really want that here.

Kingston is not a direct manufacturer, they are a 3rd party independent player, they make neither DRAM, or NAND chips, but create their own packaged solutions buying these in bulk from whoever has the most favorable terms (e.g. Wholesale purchase wafers from one of the suppliers). When you look at the actual manufacturers in the space of DRAM or HDD you are correct at numbering [3]. Micron ate up most of the separate players for DRAM (Elpida)

DRAM

1. Samsung
2. Micron
3. SK Hynix

HDD

1. Seagate
2. Western Digital
3. Toshiba

Good wiki on HDD players(223→3)

You are absolutely right, commodities are a hard business to stay in. Requires a bit of luck on making good bets at the right time to stave off bankruptcy and be ready for the upswing in demand.

 

[George³]

DRAM

1. Samsung
2. Micron
3. SK Hynix

Nanya something?
Edit .+ Winbond?

 

[Spuraticat]

I bought a Samsung 990 Pro 4TB, PCI 4.0 NVMe SSD, back in November from Amazon for about $189.99. 7450 read speed. I'm glad I got it before the prices jumped.

 

[Co BIY]

This is straight price manipulation by samsung. We need more major players to really fight this out to get decent pricing. It all feels like a scam at this point.

To the extent that they are overpricing they will lose market share. Ending third shifts on a production line can lower average price and allow them to be more competitive.

 

[thestryker]

Nanya something?
Edit .+ Winbond?

I looked up market share numbers from Q3 2023 after cyrusfox corrected me on Kingston from Trendforce:

1. Samsung - 38.9%
2. SK Hynix - 34.3%
3. Micron - 22.8%

So the top 3 make up 96% of the market making everyone else a rounding error.

 

[Brian D Smith]

Glad I got my 64GB with my new laptop!

 

[SSGBryan]

We have seen prices steadily increase since this past summer. I had a 2tb nvme that I was going to get on black friday. It went from $66 in late August to $103 as I am typing this.

Luckily, I scored a 2tb Mushkin for $60 shipped on black friday.

 

[AgentBirdnest]

I bought a Samsung 990 Pro 4TB, PCI 4.0 NVMe SSD, back in November from Amazon for about $189.99. 7450 read speed. I'm glad I got it before the prices jumped.

Wow, nice find! The 2TB model is almost back up to that price already (currently $170. I saw it as low at $120 during Black Friday sales.) 4TB is back up to $360, just a hair higher than its launch price...

 

[cyrusfox]

Nanya something?
Edit .+ Winbond?

Nanya only goes up to DDR4 and does only custom/industrial solutions...

 

[George³]

Nanya only goes up to DDR4 and does only custom/industrial solutions...

Must update your info. They produce DDR5 chips up to 5600MT/s.

 

[cyrusfox]

Must update your info. They produce DDR5 chips up to 5600MT/s.

Please view the following table and note the last column labeled availability
https://www.nanya.com/en/Product/List/450/2478

 

[George³]

Please view the following table and note the last column labeled availability
https://www.nanya.com/en/Product/List/450/2478

However, there are real chips described there with their technical codes. To see what is written in the corresponding column. It should probably say that batches are made to order. Once they have the chips described, then they have the necessary technology and production line, but they are not producing just to have stock.

 

[cyrusfox]

However, there are real chips described there with their technical codes. To see what is written in the corresponding column. It should probably say that batches are made to order. Once they have the chips described, then they have the necessary technology and production line, but they are not producing just to have stock.

Once again, they currently only supply custom/industrial solutions. And prior to 2017 all their memory was made jointly with Micron

In 2017, after years of licensing from Micron, Nanya signaled its desire to develop 10 nm nodes in-house.[6] In 2020, Nanya aims to produce their 10 nm-class of DRAM chips by the end of the year.[7]

As such, they are currently an up and coming bit player, hats off to that feat of both surviving and developing DDR5 solutions.

While DRAM does not have as large of a graveyard as HDD, there are some notable names among the many (Intel exited 1984).

 

[thestryker]

What I've seen with regards to Nanya DDR5 products is sometime next year so it makes sense that they'd only have custom order solutions right now as those are lower volume.