It’s funny how the semiconductor industry works and how tight it is between itself and its subsidiaries. While the world needs chips, raw materials, and certain key compounds in order to bring prices down, NAND Flash was going the other way, bringing them down. Now that the first begin to see the light, the second arrive and change the third, because according to what has been leaked, we are facing the beginning of something problematic for users: the prices of SSDs will rise.
The forecasts are going to fail and not because they were poorly executed, but because just as the pandemic was not foreseeable for almost anyone in this world, what happened in the factories of Western Digital and KIOXIA neither was it. A week and a half ago we had been warning about it and it will come true as if this were a prediction: bad time for SSDs.
The price of 512 GB wafers goes up
We are referring, of course, to the wafers that are intended for 512 GB capacity chips and specifically for those that integrate TLC technology. According to the graph shown, the price in December per chip was located at $4.1while by the end of February it had already reached no less than $4.4 per unit.
This means that in the absence of a month to renegotiate the contracts, the price has already risen by 7%, but this is only a sample. Sources indicate that the price for 128GB and 256GB TLC chip wafers have also increased in price, so the mistake Western Digital and KIOXIA made in losing 6.5 Exabyte in product will drag down the industry.
Some manufacturers like Lenovo through their product manager have already slipped that if we want an SSD then we must be quick to acquire it, another symptom that the escalation has begun.
How far will SSD prices go?
Well, we don’t want to be alarmist, but there are some rumors about the fact that the manufacturers, including WD and Micron, have sounded the alarm to increase them between a 10% and 25%. This has not yet been translated because the contracts have to be signed in the next two weeks for the Q2 of 2022but we do begin to see small movements doing a quick price scout, where in most we already see tiny increases of two to five euros depending on the model and capacity.
The problem is that now April is coming in the blink of an eye, a season where normalcy has been restored after the virus has always been one of great sales for the NAND Flash industry, so it is likely that, as we said at the time , the problems of WD and KIOXIA are interpreted by their rivals following the price increase to generate more benefits and at the same time being able to be competitive by leaving the price just below the one that both companies sign.
Therefore, you still have time to buy your SSD at a correct price before the price rise begins and to get rid of the speculation with it.
