Analysts Say We Are Headed For a Flash Memory Price Crash

With the industry currently facing a very large surplus of NAND flash memory, analysts suggest we could see very significant price drops in SSD and even DRAM in 2019. They say to expect a price correction over the next several quarters. Techspot reports: Jim Handy, a market analyst with Objective Analysis, predicts that the flash memory industry is headed for a "downward pricing correction" in 2019, if not a full-on collapse. If prices crash, we could be looking at NAND prices as low as eight cents per gigabyte. At last week's Flash Memory Summit, Handy said that even without a full collapse, the downturn will be the biggest "price correction in the history of semiconductor products." The Register reports that currently, NAND flash prices are hovering around $0.30/GB. A 66-percent dip would bring SSDs into a more competitive range to HDDs causing cannibalization leading to a downturn for some manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital. Manufacturers could allocate more NAND to producing DRAM, but this, in turn, would result in an oversupply in that sector. If Handy's predictions pan out, the industry could be in for a 25-percent price reduction in NAND and a 75-percent drop for nearline/high-cap SSD's. This could result in significant stock valuation shifts for some manufacturers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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