NAND Flash Prices Plunge Amid Supply Glut, Factory Output Cut (theregister.com) 34
NAND flash prices are expected to slide due to oversupply, forcing memory chipmakers to cut production to match lower-than-expected orders from PC and smartphone manufacturers. From a report: The superabundance of stock is putting a financial strain on suppliers of NAND flash, according to TrendForce, which says growth rate forecasts are being revised down from 30 percent to 10-15 percent for 2025.
"NAND flash manufacturers have adopted more decisive production cuts, scaling back full-year output to curb bit supply growth. These measures are designed to swiftly alleviate market imbalances and lay the groundwork for a price recovery," TrendForce stated.
Shrish Pant, Gartner director analyst and technology product leader, expects NAND flash pricing to remain weak for the first half of 2025, though he projects higher bit shipments for SSDs in the second half due to continuing AI server demand.
"Vendors are currently working tirelessly to discipline supply, which will lead to prices recovering in the second half of 2025. Long term, AI demand will continue to drive the demand for higher-capacity/better-performance SSDs," Pant said. Commenting on the seasonal nature of the memory market, Pant told The Register: "Buying patterns will mean that NAND flash prices will remain cyclical depending on hyperscalers' buying behavior."
"NAND flash manufacturers have adopted more decisive production cuts, scaling back full-year output to curb bit supply growth. These measures are designed to swiftly alleviate market imbalances and lay the groundwork for a price recovery," TrendForce stated.
Shrish Pant, Gartner director analyst and technology product leader, expects NAND flash pricing to remain weak for the first half of 2025, though he projects higher bit shipments for SSDs in the second half due to continuing AI server demand.
"Vendors are currently working tirelessly to discipline supply, which will lead to prices recovering in the second half of 2025. Long term, AI demand will continue to drive the demand for higher-capacity/better-performance SSDs," Pant said. Commenting on the seasonal nature of the memory market, Pant told The Register: "Buying patterns will mean that NAND flash prices will remain cyclical depending on hyperscalers' buying behavior."
I'm guessing there's some collusion going on (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course ain't none of that gonna happen for the next 4 years but still...
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> monitors became affordable going from 350 to $400 to $150 to $200 overnight because the department of Justice broke up a trust.
The orange plutokisser will probably glue them back together.
Fortunately for the rest of us, this is outside the US and the US is isolating itself.
I remember that time RSilvergun is talking about, it wasn't the US DOJ as much as it was Korean as it was mainly Korean panel manufacturers that were colluding.
Same with RAM memory a few years after that too (I.E. Hynix).
With any luck there will be an affordable 4TB SSD soon. Also... why can't I have a large cheap flash storage, I.E. 4 x 2 TB drives in a single 2.5" or 3.5" case... I don't want it to be fast, just
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Deez nuts.
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Apple will be unphased by this (Score:2)
I'm thinking Apple will see this as an opportunity to charge more. I wish they would move with the market more.
Re:Apple will be unphased by this (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking Apple will see this as an opportunity to charge more. I wish they would move with the market more.
If they're smart, they'll take this as an opportunity to double the storage capacity of every device that they sell, effective immediately, at the same price point, while all the other manufacturers are trying to figure out what to do.
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Nah they'd never do that. It's their policy to make sure they always supply less storage than competitors.
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Apple just offers a nearly unusable storage tier so they can have a cost-competitive laptop to pull people into their ecosystem. Then they can get recurring itunes storage $$ from you which quickly exceeds the profit they'd get on their ridiculously overpriced storage.
Then again, it's not like every other mfg isn't doing the same nonsense once they play the "smaller, lighter, better" card to stop using removable memory and storage.
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Apple just offers a nearly unusable storage tier so they can have a cost-competitive laptop to pull people into their ecosystem. Then they can get recurring itunes storage $$ from you which quickly exceeds the profit they'd get on their ridiculously overpriced storage.
Do people actually do that? I pay a couple of bucks a month for more iCloud storage because my iPhone backups are big enough to need the space (and local backups of an iPhone are a pain in the a**, presumably by design to sell more iCloud backup storage), but storing stuff in "the cloud" instead of buying enough local storage is, in my experience, the quickest way to lose data.
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Do people actually do that? I pay a couple of bucks a month for more iCloud storage because ...
Did you really just do a, "Do people actually do $X? I do a little $X." :-)
... because my iPhone backups are big enough to need the space (and local backups of an iPhone are a pain in the a** ...
The free storage limit on iCloud is 5gb.
10 years ago, they released the iPhone 7. The smallest one had 32gb of storage.
Then they push the backups to iCloud. Mine still yells at me from time to time about not having enough backup space (I turned off backup of photos, apps, and damn near everything, but it's still too much).
How is that the default backup service? It's a frickin cock tease. Of course, people are buying the cheapest op
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Do people actually do that? I pay a couple of bucks a month for more iCloud storage because ...
Did you really just do a, "Do people actually do $X? I do a little $X." :-)
Nope. I meant "Do people actually pay for storage every month so that they don't have to have as much storage space on their phones. Paying for storage online for backups is entirely orthogonal.
... because my iPhone backups are big enough to need the space (and local backups of an iPhone are a pain in the a** ...
The free storage limit on iCloud is 5gb. 10 years ago, they released the iPhone 7. The smallest one had 32gb of storage. Then they push the backups to iCloud. Mine still yells at me from time to time about not having enough backup space (I turned off backup of photos, apps, and damn near everything, but it's still too much).
How is that the default backup service? It's a frickin cock tease. Of course, people are buying the cheapest option of the latest and greatest, but even the most meager of uses puts them over the iCloud limit and they'll need to pay or forgo iCloud backups. IMO, that backup option should offer third party support and have an open protocol (NOTE: "should", as in that would be good for all, not "MUST", as in the law requires it).
Yeah, I fully agree that we need antitrust action against Apple over backups, and we have needed it for a long time. There's no legitimate reason why I should not be able to run an app similar to Time Machine on my iPhone and back up to my Synology-based NAS. The only reason I can't is because Apple, by prohibiti
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Do people actually do that? I pay a couple of bucks a month for more iCloud storage because ...
Did you really just do a, "Do people actually do $X? I do a little $X." :-)
Nope. I meant "Do people actually pay for storage every month so that they don't have to have as much storage space on their phones. Paying for storage online for backups is entirely orthogonal.
Ah! That makes sense.
TBH, for pictures and video, I think offloading old pics to online storage (like iCloud) to save local phone storage space makes plenty of sense... just be sure to backup those iCloud photos elsewhere. Personally, I want to entirely separate backups: one for file data (photos, video, documents), and one for everything else (apps, app configs, settings, app data, etc..), and I really think iCloud should be able to handle the latter in its default tier, but that's still not enough space :
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It's also their policy to charge significantly more than everyone else for the same components.
And nowadays, also to make RAM/disks non upgradable/serviceable.
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If they're smart, they'll charge the highest price the market will bear... and Apple people will bear a lot.
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It is CRIMINAL that Apple charges $1200 for 4tb internal storage which is $300 via amazon NVME. and $600 for 64gb RAM is also ridiculous. Those of us with Logic-based music studios simply need to suck it up, I guess.
Of course, it's because I just bought an SSD today (Score:2)
Re: Of course, it's because I just bought an SSD t (Score:3)
On a strictly per GB basis, it isn't that great of a price. I bought 5 Team group MP34 4 TB for $222 each. And that wasn't the low. They went below $200 at some point. They are PCI-E 3, just like the AMD 5700G APU in the system that contains them. 2 on the mobile, and 3 on an Asus Hyperx 16 card. Somehow the 4th part on that controller won't work. Some sort of PCIe lane and/or bifurcation limitation. I wasn't going to buy a Threadripper to fix it, though. This is a fully passively cooled, silent machine, t
They cut the supply already at the end of 2023! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, what are they talking about?! Prices are 30-100% higher than in 2023 and aren't really moving down!
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Yeah, I have two 4TB nvme drives arriving today to replace a raidz of 500GB SATA SSD drives.
The price had (slowly) crept up since I first spec'ed it so it was time to pull the trigger before the tariffs kick in.
There is no reflection of supply glut in the retail price.
Nand prices go up and down (Score:3)
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Indeed. Alongside RAM, NAND is the other classic cyclical (boom & bust) technology market.
The long-term trend is always down, but inside of a two year period it's going to behave like a sine wave, with prices cresting and busting out as production reacts to market prices and the onlining of new facilities.
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Nice. (Score:2)
I just decided to transition to an all-SSD NAS due to a bunch of considerations like portability, low power consumption, low noise, fast access speed, etc.
I just received my Terramaster F8 SSD a couple of days ago, and it's essentially an Intel-based computer with 8 M.2 slots in the size of a paperback book.
My understanding is some SATA 8TB SSDs were around $350 a couple of years ago, so hopefully prices will drop near those levels so I can grab a couple in the near future.
Still waiting on HDD prices to come back down (Score:2)
Yes I know that SSDs and HDDs are made on different assembly lines, with few of the same parts. However they do have overlapping demand. If SSD prices are plummeting that should shift more consumers in that direction away from HDDs. Yet the HDDs prices still haven't come down to where they were over 2
Plunge? Where? (Score:2)
Where are these prices plunging.
Large U.3 SSDs, or at least comparable sizes to disks, are rare. They're averaging 3.8TB with a small few 15TB available. And, the prices are insanely high. Shouldn't these too cheap to produce chips be making large SSDs available for really cheap prices and making spinning disks a thing of the past?
I just saw a 50TB storage project where drives alone were $21,000. The same configuration using spinning SAS would have been $7k worth of drives.
Nice doublespeak (Score:3)
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Dont worry! (Score:2)