Contract prices of NAND flash memory chips declined by roughly 9 to 10% in the fourth quarter of 2015, due largely to oversupply, according to market research firm TrendForce.

Prices of embedded multi-media cared (eMMC) and solid-state drive (SSD) products declined by 10 to 11% in the fourth quarter due to weaker-than-expected shipments of smartphones, tablets and notebook PCs, TrendForce (Taipei).

An increase in total bit shipments in the fourth quarter was not enough to offset price declines. As a result, NAND flash revenue decreased by 2.3% in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter of 2015, TrendForce said.

“Besides facing rapidly falling prices, the manufacturers have also reached a bottleneck in their process technology migration,” Sean Yang, research director at DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, said in a statement.

Yang said memory makers are experiencing yield issues with 3D NAND flash, with the exception of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which has already shipped samples of its third-generation 3D NAND flash to customers.

“As the cost reduction advantage associated with technology migration diminishes, branded NAND flash suppliers posted significant quarterly declines in both their revenues and operating margins for the fourth quarter of last year,” Yang said.

By: DocMemory
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