According to DRAMeXchange, mobile DRAM prices have stabilized in the third quarter. All mobile memory product categories are showing a price decline of only less than 5%, with the majority of smartphone manufacturers purchasing mobile memory at the same price as in the previous quarter. As mobile DRAM prices have been continuously falling for over two years, the stabilization caused by peak season demand brings a sigh of relief for DRAM makers.
2013 PC DRAM global module market revenues arrived at US$ 7.3 billion, a 32% YoY increase from 2012’s $US 5.5 billion, according to DRAMeXchange, the memory and storage research division of TrendForce. The main factors leading to the revenue growth included price increases for PC DRAM, increased spot market demand, and the rising proportion of contract market transactions.
The memory storage industry is expected to see overall growth in the second half of this year driven primarily by smartphone demand. As this occurs, commodity DRAM capacity will be tight, which is expected to remain unchanged in the short term. This will bring increased demand for server as well as mobile DRAM during the second half of the year, and DRAM vendors as a result are likely to report record-high profits. In terms of the NAND Flash market, the market is expected to turn from oversupply in the first half of the year into balanced supply during the second half, as OEM and module customer demand strengthens. All of these factors will push up pricing in the industry during the second half as a result, according to DRAMeXchange, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based market intelligence firm TrendForce.
NAND Flash manufacturers have recently bumped up efforts to maximize profits by adjusting production capacity and have decreased supplies to channel distributors in order to fulfill demand from system OEM customers. This has led to increased contract prices for NAND Flash chips by roughly 2-5% in the second half of June.
On May 29, 2014, Seagate Technology (Seagate) announced it acquired LSI’s Accelerated Solution Division (ASD) and FCD (Flash Components Division) assets from Avago Technology (Avago) for US $450 million. Originally, FCD was responsible for LSI’s SSD controller R&D division, and formerly a SandForce research team.