WDC recently stated that certain materials were contaminated in late January at its NAND Flash production lines in Yokkaichi and Kitakami, Japan, which are joint ventures with Kioxia. Before this incident, TrendForce had forecast that the NAND Flash market will see a slight oversupply the entire year and average price from the first quarter (Q1) to Q2 will face downward pressure.

However, the impact of WDC’s material contamination issue is significant and Samsung’s experience during the previous lockdown of Xi’an due to the pandemic has also retarded the magnitude of the NAND Flash price slump. Therefore, the Q1 price drop will diminish to 5-10%. In addition, according to TrendForce, the combined WDC/Kioxia NAND Flash market share in the Q3 2021 was as high as 32.5%. The consequences of this latest incident may push the price of NAND Flash in Q2 to spike 5-10%.

Currently, WDC and Kioxia are focused on supplying PC client SSD and eMMC products. Since WDC is the number two and number one supplier in the client SSD and eMMC markets, respectively, subsequent supply will inevitably be hampered. Therefore, even if production demand for PC OEM is revised downward in Q2, client SSD prices may remain resistant to decline. In terms of enterprise SSD, Kioxia PCIe 4.0 has been verified by a number of customers and the company’s market share in 2022 was originally forecast to increase. However, this incident will impact Kioxia’s ability to ship product and further affect subsequent customer procurement. Therefore, in order for buyers to satisfy their own production requirements, a Q2 decline in enterprise SSD product pricing will be largely restrained.

In addition, as buyers and sellers in the spot market are still clarifying events and incident assessments, they mostly responded by suspending quotations, with no new quotations having been generated. However, TrendForce’s assessment indicates that subsequent events will obviously stimulate spot price appreciation. Judging from contract pricing, any orders negotiated on a whole quarter basis should be unaffected in the near-term but there may be an immediate price increase in wafer quotations this February and March.

By: DocMemory
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