Price Drop
According to semiconductor e-commerce site DRAMeXchange and industry sources on Sept. 16, the average price of DDR4 R-DIMM, the stock DRAM for servers, fell by more than 15 percent in late Aug.
The lowest price of DDR4 R-DIMM is predicted to be similar to that of its previous version DDR3 at the end of Sept., according to a recent report.
Like DRAM, the price of NAND Flash, one of the two prominent memory semiconductors, decreased by 6 to 7 percent in late Aug., and the price of major memory chips seems to be fluctuating.
Major manufacturers raised concerns about oversupply due to a decrease in the price of NAND Flash. DRAMeXchange expects that the downward trend in the price of DRAM for servers will continue in the first quarter of 2016.
Since the storage capacity of servers itself has increased, the growth rate will increase by 30 percent. However, the global economic recession and collapsing emerging market currencies are likely to result in a reduction in demand for servers. Major memory chip makers, including Samsung Electronics, are planning to respond to the problem by increasing the weight of high-end products.
Some in the industry are saying that a decrease in the price of DDR4 R-DIMM could stimulate demand for upgrading corporate-oriented servers, which might limit the price fall. Intel's fourth-gen platform Grantley is forecast to create a demand for server upgrades.
In addition, the expansion of Chinese companies' share of the global white-box server market could be a catalyst for the server DRAM market. Chinese server vendors have increased their share of the global market from 2 to 14 percent.