Rising Chip Prices
Skyrocketing prices of NAND flash memories, a main cash cow of Korean semiconductor producers, are giving them the green light in profit generation.
According to industrial sources on July 3, the average fixed price of a NAND flash memory (64 Gb) announced by DRAM Exchange on June 30 rose 10.89% to 2.24 dollars from the previous month. Prices of NAND flash memories bounced back after a two-month decline. Of late, Samsung and SK Hynix have been concentrating on the NAND flash memory market while gradually pruning the proportion of DRAMs.
The start of a high-demand season of the before market led to the rise in prices of NAND flash memories. Apple’s new product launch and an increase in the shipment of Chinese smartphones also drove up the demand.
Prices announced by DRAM Exchange is based on 2D NAND flash memories. But an increase in storage capacities of smartphones is fueling demand for 3D NAND flash memories. Apple is planning to load 256 GB NAND flash memories in the iPhone 7 slated to hit the market in the second half of this year. “The iPhone can ramp up demand for NAND flash memories by about 3%, and the demand for NAND flash memory-based eMMCs grew about 36%,” DRAM Exchange said earlier.
Moreover, solid state drives (SSDs), a typical NAND flash memory-based product, have become the main stream in the market as over 30% of notebook computers are loaded with SSDs. NAND flash memories have great growth potential as SSDs are now installed in more servers. “NAND flash memories are used more widely used such as smartphones, tablets and SSDs,” said a representative of the NAND flash memory industry. “In particular, corporate demand for SSDs is on a sharp rise.”