- NAND flash prices are moving away from short-term cycles towards structural pressure
- TrendForce Data Shows Inventory Movements No Longer Drive SSD Component Costs
- Suppliers are limiting production growth through cautious capacity expansion strategies.
NAND Flash prices are entering a phase of sustained pressure that reflects, and may overcome, recent DRAM market disruptions.
New data from TrendForce suggests that SSD component costs are no longer driven by short-term inventory cycles.
Instead, structural changes in production strategy and demand composition are reshaping how NAND Flash is supplied and priced.
Bidding strategies restrict bit growth
The recent forecast challenges assumptions that NAND prices will normalize once temporary market imbalances fade, particularly as demand for enterprise storage continues to expand.
Memory vendors have adjusted NAND Flash strategies toward efficiency improvements rather than aggressive capacity expansion.
Manufacturing focus has shifted toward increased layer count, adoption of QLC, and process optimization, limiting short-term production growth.
Capital spending remains conservative despite growing demand signals, with cleanroom space and production line limitations acting as limiting factors.
These conditions restrict how quickly additional NAND supply can reach the market, even as pricing incentives increase.
Demand patterns in NAND Flash markets remain uneven. AI infrastructure, enterprise servers, and cloud storage platforms continue to absorb large volumes of high-capacity SSDs.
AI stands out as the main driver of increased demand for NAND Flash, which has prompted revisions to the industry’s capital spending outlook.
At the same time, smartphone and laptop shipments face downward revisions as rising memory costs pressure device margins.
This divergence has reinforced seller leverage, allowing stronger segments to influence contract prices, while weaker consumer markets provide limited offsetting demand.
However, investment priorities favor advanced manufacturing technologies over gross capacity expansion.
DRAM spending emphasizes advanced nodes and HBM-related production, while NAND Flash investment focuses on higher-layer architectures and hybrid link techniques.
Equipment suppliers remain optimistic about long-term demand, although increasing technical complexity poses barriers to rapid scaling.
As a result, higher spending does not directly translate into meaningful growth.
For these reasons, contract prices are rising sharply, supported by inventory replenishment and sustained business demand.
These price increases appear more durable than temporary, given limited supply growth, reducing the likelihood of a price pullback after they reach higher levels.
If AI-related storage requirements continue to expand faster than manufacturing production, NAND SSD components may follow a similar pricing trajectory to recent DRAM trends.
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