Price Rebounding?
The spot price of DDR3 512x8 rebounded on June 6. “The spot price is likely to affect the DRAM contract price for the third quarter of this year,” said the market research firm DRAMeXchange, adding, “The price is expected to become stable in that quarter.” Under the circumstances, the average selling price of DRAM chips is predicted to rise sooner or later after a continuous decline for 19 months in a row.
Apple’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are forecast to stimulate the mobile DRAM demand with their RAM capacities increased to 2 GB and 3 GB, respectively. In addition, major semiconductor manufacturers’ bit growth rate is predicted to fall from 25% to 23% or so, which is another factor that can contribute to a recovery in price. The bit growth rate refers to the amount of supply of memory semiconductor chips on a bit basis.
Until recently, the sales of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plummeted due to a drop in DRAM price. For example, Samsung Electronics’ DRAM sales fell 16.6% from a quarter ago to US$3.972 billion in the first quarter of this year. During the same period, the DRAM sales of SK Hynix dropped by 19.2% to US$2.317 billion. In that quarter, South Korean semiconductor manufacturers accounted for 74.4% of the global DRAM market, followed by American (18.8%) and Taiwanese (6.8%).
In the meantime, the NAND flash price has shown signs of stability since the second quarter of this year, too. DRAMeXchange explained that the price is likely to rebound in the second half of 2016 based on the demands for the iPhone, solid state drives, smartphones manufactured by Chinese suppliers, etc.