SSD Prices Set To Fall 10% in Q4 as AI PC Demand Lags - TrendForce

SSD prices are set to drop up to 10% in Q4 2024, market research firm TrendForce has reported. The decline stems from increased production and weakening demand, particularly in the consumer sector. Enterprise SSD prices, however, may see a slight increase. TrendForce analysts attribute the softer demand partly to slower-than-expected adoption of AI PCs. The mobile storage market could experience even steeper price cuts, with eMMC and UFS components potentially falling 13% as smartphone makers deplete inventories. The forecast follows modest price reductions observed in Q3 2024.

I thought Data Center demand was picking up slack

[rsilvergun]

though I certainly won't say no to a $150ish dollar 4tb SSD.

Demand for AI PCs is Slower Than Anticipated?

[garett_spencley]

Colour me shocked. I still don't know what an "AI PC" actually does that a regular PC can't do.

If it has AI bloatware pre-installed, then I'm not interested as the world of AI software and services is such that I would prefer to pick and choose (this landscape is also changing very rapidly so by the time I buy this over-priced PC with bloatware on it, that bloatware will be obsolete anyway).

And if it has hardware in it that allows me to train my own models then I'm not interested because model-training is something that is still pretty niche right now. I know a lot of people that are playing with LLMs to help them be more productive in whatever domain they work in ... but I know relatively few people who are training their own models (I do know some, but they are in the extreme minority).

And if an AI PC is neither of the above, then the marketing has failed spectacularly because I obviously have no idea wtf an AI PC is or does that I can't do with my current hardware. What I do know for certain is that I'm not going to pay a premium just because the marketing department slapped "AI" on the label.

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[Archtech]

I still don't know what an "AI PC" actually does that a regular PC can't do.

Guess instead of computing.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't know what an "AI PC" actually does that a regular PC can't do.

It can understand speech efficiently, yours and others (while conferencing, etc.,) without murdering the battery, for rapid, accurate transcription. Image search or analysis, photo modification and touchup, etc. Real-time video analysis, clean-up, etc.. There are a lot of nice things that 45 TFLOP NPUs can do.

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[Entrope]

My computer could wreck a nice beach in the 1990s, I don't know why people think they need a new AI PC to do that 25+ years later.

Re: Demand for AI PCs is Slower Than Anticipated?

[Frank Burly]

An AI PC is a personal computer that incorporates AI software with hardware that assists these calculations like graphics card from NVidia, Radeon, or Hercules. These cards lighten the load on the AI PC's central processing unit, which may also have a coprocessor like the Overdrive, which supplies an FPU unit for processors that don't already have one. Consumers are said to desire an AI PC because it allows them to work faster and minimize work time. This is important because many people now work from home,

Weird that prices have stayed the same for years

[ebunga]

At least on the 500-2TB end that goes into desktop machines. I'm not saying there's a price-fixing conspiracy going on... but seeing as how every single one of the companies involved has been guilty of price fixing conspiracies before...

Re:

[guruevi]

Inflation has been eating all of the savings you should've seen. According to the government, since February 2020, consumer prices jumped over 25 percent on electronics. If you do look at the total picture and account for the loss of value of your dollar, prices have continued to drop significantly, partially because the economy has gone into a recession and companies aren't just replacing computers anymore.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

Before that their NCQ was trash and I lost a lot of time and money due to their garbage QA.

It's so disappointing. Buying from Korea has appeal if all things are equal, even if more expensive. But it has to work without falling over out of the gate.

No more Samsung in my specifications.

Knee Jerk Reactions, Overanticipation of Adoption

[eepok]

Last year around this time, it was normal to find a 2TB NVME M.2 drive for $80 on sale or $100 base price. They then announced that that prices would go up due to industry overproduction (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dram-and-nand-costs-are-increasing-due-to-production-cuts), or as you and I might describe it: "too much competition".

Then they dropped the cheaper, more energy efficient gen3 NVME tech in favor of newer, faster gen4 and gen5 but home builders and PC prefabs learned that if you're not transferring multi-GB files on the norm, the performance difference cannot be measured by the human experience. Now, the majority of the 2TB M.2 drives for sale are gen4 and they cost $130 (base) or MAYBE $100 on sale.

So the builders simply adjusted and bought smaller M.2 drives.

Here's the lesson for the industry: Newer is not always financially better. If Samsung, Micron, Kioxia, or SK Hynix would have kept their gen3 chip production up and not abandoned the budget market in search of whales, they would have cleaned up. Their production would have gotten more efficient and they would have cornered the market for the vast majority of the pre-fab and home builder market.

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[Archtech]

Here's the lesson for the industry: Newer is not always financially better.

Music to the ears of everyone spending (or preparing to spend) untold billions on AI because it got a glowing write-up in their favourite colour magazine and they're tired of making bad decisions with their own brains.

I still have trouble understanding a world where everyone is shrieking that the world is about to burn up and we must stop using fossil fuels, and simultaneously insisting that we must build immense new power plants because AI.

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[ebunga]

Nobody wants AI if it costs actual money. It's a novelty, like annoyingly bright blue LEDs.

Big Enough

[nealric]

Once SSDs in the ~2TB range came down to the $100-150 range they got to the point that there can't be very much upgrade demand at the consumer level. Most consumers just don't have a need to store more than a terabyte or two of data.

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[Archtech]

Until their existing SSD wears out - or, more disturbingly if it hasn't happened to you before, just vanishes one day.

Re:

[nealric]

Never happened to me. The first SSD I ever bought is still works fine. I had plenty of HDDs fail back in the day.

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[HBI]

I've lost one or two very old ones - talking 2009 or so vintage - but other than that I have every single one of mine.

I think the older ones probably ran out of write cycles.

A what PC?

[supabeast!]

What the fuck is an AI PC? Is it smart enough to realize what a pile of shit Windows is and install a better operating system?

Re:

[TractorBarry]

What would be *REALLY* useful would be an AI that could reverse engineer Windows executables/file formats and rewrite/recompile them for Linux. For my purposes especially things like old VSTs/Audio programs.. That is the only thing I'd personally use "AI" for (or as I prefer to call it "APM" - "Advanced Pattern Matching" as there's absolutely no "Intelligence" involved whatsoever).

Then Windows can finally go in the bin of history where it belongs :)

Cheaper than HD yet ?

[dargaud]

Wake me when 20Tb SSDs are cheaper than HDs... In 3 years or so maybe ?

I happen to own a CPU with an "NPU" in it...

[ffkom]

... because some months ago I bought a new CPU. And so far, that NPU has not seen a single use, outside of testing. And I would not be surprised if it stays that way. Because the few reasonably good use cases for "AI" models run on huge clusters of expensive remote hardware, rather than my modest "NPU".

Good thing I only buy AI SSDs

[byronivs]

And I always pay full price for AI upgrade. No better value.

I've seen prices up recently

[neuro88]

I've seen the prices on Samsung 990 Pro SSD's go up recently (across multiple retailers). Unsure if it's limited to just Samsung drives. Hopefully this means prices will go down soon..?

Might wait for Black Friday.

china bypasses patents... So

[LostMyBeaver]

Patents are a method for inventors to collect royalties when their inventions are used by others. When a patent holder refuses to license their technology to a competitor, it doesn't mean the competitor can't use it. It means the hold is refusing to accept payment.

The US required many western companies to refuse to license their technology to China therefore forfeiting their rights to collect payments. This allows Chinese companies to make competing products without the patent overhead which means their pro