Weak demand pulls NAND flash contract price

In 1HApr, NAND flash contract price dropped by 4-8 percent. This is according to DRAMeXchange that cited the traditional slow sale season leading to weak demand momentum as the reason behind this poor performance. The research division of TrendForce Corp. also added that as future order visibility is low, NAND flash buyers are conservative on placing orders, reducing inventory levels to guard against the risk from price decline—unless vendors offer price discounts.

This buyer expectation is pressuring vendors to reduce price. However, this round of price slashing has not only caused profit erosion for NAND flash vendors, but the effectiveness of lowering price to stimulate buying has decreased. Thus, NAND flash vendors are leaning toward maintaining stable prices. Therefore, due to the slow season effect and the change in NAND flash vendors' pricing strategy, TrendForce expects the future NAND flash contract price trend to show a mild decline.

In 1Q12, the majority UFD shipments were 4GB products, but as 2ynm 64Gb TLC production increases in Q2, the reduced prices will attract UFD module makers, and 8GB may surpass 4GB as the mainstream density in 2Q12. As for the bundle card market, 2GB and 4GB were the mainstream densities in 1Q12. However, in 2Q12, as NAND flash manufacturers will introduce 2ynm-class cards with densities of 4GB or more, and since 2GB is no longer enough to meet increasing mobile phone requirements, TrendForce expects mainstream bundle card density to increase from 2GB to 4GB.