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The global DRAM market has been on a roller coaster ride during 2016. Prices were on a steep slide in the year’s first half due to weak demand. However, the pickup in notebook shipments and the strong sales of Chinese branded smartphones since the start of the third quarter have not only reversed the price downtrend but also caused average selling prices of DRAM to make big jumps. Looking ahead to 2017, DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, forecasts that DRAM bit supply will expand by less than 20% annually. This growth rate will also be a new historical low for the industry. Assuming that there will be no significant weakening of demand, DRAM supply will generally remain tight next year. Thus, suppliers should continue to reap profits during the entire 2017 on account of rising prices.
DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, reports that the global shortage of NAND Flash has reached its most severe phase for 2016 in this fourth quarter. Factors that aggravate the shortage include strong smartphone shipments, growing SSD demand and the increase in the average memory density of eMMCs and eMCPs.
Prices in the contract and spot markets for PC DRAM kept climbing between October and November, according to DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. The average contract price of PC DRAM 4GB modules increased by 2.86% monthly to arrive at US$18 in November, while the average spot prices of DDR3 and DDR4 4Gb chips respectively rose 6% and 2% monthly to reach US$2.6 and US$2.53. The general state of the PC DRAM market in November suggests that the upward price trend will continue in the future.
Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (abbreviation QCT, here referred to as Qualcomm) tops the projected ranking of the top 10 fabless IC design houses worldwide based on annual revenues for 2016, according to TrendForce’s analysis. Broadcom Limited is expected to be runner-up, while MediaTek will take third place. The ranking positions of these three companies are fairly secure in the short term because collectively they would represent about 65% of the total revenue generated all the design houses that are listed on this year’s top 10 ranking.
Prices of NAND Flash rose in the third quarter as smartphone makers continued to generate robust demand for related products and the technological transition from 2D-NAND to 3-NAND manufacturing reduced the industry’s overall output. The latest report from DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, finds that the revenue of the global NAND Flash industry grew 19.6% sequentially in the third quarter. At the same time, NAND Flash suppliers made larger gains in respective their operating margins compared with the prior quarter.
