With demand growth failing to catch up with that of supply, NAND flash contract prices are set to register a double-digit sequential decline in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to DRAMeXchange.

DRAMeXchange noted that 3D NAND flash contract prices for October 2018 alone suffered a monthly fall of 13-17%, marking the biggest decline of its kind ever seen since November 2017.

Globally leading suppliers are aggressively proceeding with the development and supply of 96-layer 3D NAND flash, with single die capacity reaching 1Tb, further driving down prices for such chips.

Statistics from ChinaFlashMarket show that the NAND flash composite price index has plunged by 63% as of the end of October 2018, with prices for mainstream SSD devices also falling 50% or so.

Industry sources said that prices for branded SSDs with a capacity of 240GB has declined to US$31 per unit since the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2018, and those for 480GB SSDs have also dropped to US$58. As to white-box SSD devices, unit market quotes for 240GB and 480GB SSDs have dipped to US$25 and US$45, respectively.

With the gradual adoption of QLC (quad-level cell) NAND SSD starting in the second half of 2019, 480GB SSD may compete well with 1TB HDD in pricing. This is expected to further drive up the SSD penetration ratio for notebooks to over 65% in 2019 from 52% in 2018, the sources indicated.

By: DocMemory
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