News SSDs pricing to 'skyrocket' as flash shortages are already underway — critical NAND packages are already in short supply, high-capacity SSD models...

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HaninTH said:
Indeed! Let us all not forget that this is the same entity that publicly declared that they would induce these higher prices by restricting output of NAND chips last year. This is not a natural supply shortage, it is planned.

Thanks, Unregulated Capitalism!
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You think they should be forced to produce the products at a loss ?

Not even sure shortage is the right word. Are there bare shelves with none available ?
 
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magbarn said:
Memory "OPEC" Cartel strikes again.
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They don't even see that they are just setting the whole world up to be completely smashed by China on this. They are going to corner the market with cheap chips in a few years that all suck and die like crazy....but are so much cheaper nobody will be able to compete.

It's idiotic, short sighted, and it's going to hurt the overall market.
 
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They made too much which caused the drop in demand and subsequent pricing now they're shifting the other way. This is how supply and demand works and while it's not good for the consumer it's generally the right thing for the market. When the floor drops out we end up with consolidation (which there has already been a fair amount of) which is what happened in the DRAM industry. Hopefully things don't readjust too far, but only time will tell where it ends up.
 
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JTWrenn said:
They don't even see that they are just setting the whole world up to be completely smashed by China on this. They are going to corner the market with cheap chips in a few years that all suck and die like crazy....but are so much cheaper nobody will be able to compete.

It's idiotic, short sighted, and it's going to hurt the overall market.
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Thats quite a paradox, China will take over with inferior quality products because of how they price them... Have you ever had a drive go bad? How were your feelings towards said manufacturer? Not a good long term strategy for business survival, ask OCZ how that worked for them...

NAND is commodity, if China can supply enough and produce cheaper, they can win the market, if they cannot match the quality, they will not be able to compete.
 
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cyrusfox said:
Thats quite a paradox, China will take over with inferior quality products because of how they price them... Have you ever had a drive go bad? How were your feelings towards said manufacturer? Not a good long term strategy for business survival, ask OCZ how that worked for them...

NAND is commodity, if China can supply enough and produce cheaper, they can win the market, if they cannot match the quality, they will not be able to compete.
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Right because that has not happened with...oh wait, just about everything.
 
JTWrenn said:
Right because that has not happened with...oh wait, just about everything.
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Pretty much, see it in all our large appliances, they're all going downhill in quality thanks to Chinese now starting to flood the market. Even Costco is now selling Chinese brand fridge/freezers which are trash quality, but you used to be able to buy a good quality Whirlpool/Kenmore at the prices the Chinese fridges are now going for. Seen the same thing happen to gas grills. Even Weber grills are now almost the same trash quality as the Chinese grills at higher prices.
 
HaninTH said:
Let us all not forget that this is the same entity that publicly declared that they would induce these higher prices by restricting output of NAND chips last year. This is not a natural supply shortage, it is planned.
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When you're losing money because the price of what you make has collapsed, it's only natural to cut your costs by making less of it. Would you rather most of these companies went out of business? What would happen to supply (and therefore costs), then?

You can be certain that as NAND becomes profitable, again, they will increase production. That's because profit = margin * volume, and investors like profit. The main issue is that there's lag built into the system.
 
JTWrenn said:
Right because that has not happened with...oh wait, just about everything.
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The last time this happened in the computing industry (meaning poor quality, not Chinese manufacturing) was with motherboard caps. It ended rather quickly and led to manufacturers advertising Japanese caps rather prominently. You can only make something so much worse before it blows up in your face and the cost benefit no longer exists.
 
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das_stig said:
So basically all the nand manufacturers reduce capacity and raise prices, smells like a cartel is price fixing, time for an anti-competitive/consumer investigations.
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Their sales dropped like a rock, so obviously they had to cut back on production.

If you think about it for a minute, you can understand a little better. First, NAND has to go into SSDs. SSDs get made and sit in warehouses until they're sold. If SSD sales slow down, SSD production gets cut back. However, the SSD producers won't make more SSDs until retailers run low on SSD inventory and put in more orders, and those orders will be smaller. The SSD makers will have a certain amount of NAND in their inventories, and only order more when that runs low. If they're burning through their inventory of NAND slowly, it'll take them a while before they put in more orders, and those won't be as big. So, the sales slowdown gets amplified as it reaches back to the NAND producer.

If you're a NAND maker, you have costs from R&D + running your production line. Your revenues come from selling chips. If your revenues drop near zero, you're going to lose tons of money, so you do what you can to cut costs. That means cutting back production + layoffs. Maybe even mothballing or selling factories, selling some assets, anything you can do just to stay in business. The steeper the downturn, the deeper the cuts. The deep cuts hurt your capacity, which it takes time to build back.

I'm not going to say NAND-makers have totally pure motives, but they have to do whatever it takes to stay in business. It's a business where adding capacity is capital-intensive and takes time, meaning it can't quickly scale up to meet spikes in demand.

Obviously, collusion is illegal and any serious allegations should be investigated. However, the current dynamic is not explainable only by price-fixing. We just went through the biggest crash in NAND sales since the inception of SSDs. The industry has seen nothing like it, in its entire history!
 
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This fake-ass world must die! Vote with your dollars/cents and make them all choke on their chips. I have all the SSD storage I need and won't buy again until what I want is $50 per TB, or less.
 
das_stig said:
So basically all the nand manufacturers reduce capacity and raise prices, smells like a cartel is price fixing, time for an anti-competitive/consumer investigations.
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What is the price and how was it fixed ?

The consumers wanted less NAND, they bought less NAND, the price dropped, the makers listened and are making less (some, Intel, left the business entirely), and the price has risen a bit.

Very straight forward.

How is that anti-consumer ? It's been consumer led.
 
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thestryker said:
They made too much which caused the drop in demand and subsequent pricing now they're shifting the other way. This is how supply and demand works and while it's not good for the consumer it's generally the right thing for the market.
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The consumer benefits are going to be primarily in the markets the producers have shifted their efforts to. In this case perhaps AI related products that consumers value much more than another TB of commodity NAND.

It's probably inaccurate to say that consumers in general are harmed by the higher price of NAND because the mass of consumers is no longer in that market because their needs have been satisfied.

Those crying for government regulation and investigation are not seeing that these decisions are happening in an entire world of choices and opportunities.

Should Intel have been required to stay in the NAND business even though they think AI is a better business ?

Should TSMC be required to produce NAND instead of Phone SOCs ? - they could probably do so with success.
 
t3t4 said:
Vote with your dollars/cents and make them all choke on their chips. I have all the SSD storage I need and won't buy again until what I want is $50 per TB, or less.
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I actually agree with this, to some extent. In 2023, I bought all the SSD storage I expect to need for the next couple years. That saved me money and those of us who responded to the price drops also helped out the industry.

Now, with prices rebounding, I can comfortably sit things out until production catches up & new nodes come online. It's the new nodes & designs which deliver more value per $, and the rollout of those was scaled back due to budget crunches. Therefore, I wouldn't expect to see competitive deals relative to 2023 pricing until probably well into 2025.
 
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