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During 4Q17, the yield rates of suppliers’ respective 3D-NAND processes climbed steadily, while smartphones remained the major demand contributor in peak season, according to DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. As the result, only contract prices of eMMC and UFS products went up by 0-5% QoQ in 4Q17, but other major application markets such as PCs, tablets, and servers together with data centers showed slowing growth momentum. Their contract prices were either flat or fell by a small margin, and the market shifted toward an equilibrium of supply and demand.
Global mobile DRAM revenue hit a new high of US$8 billion in 4Q17, a robust sequential growth of 23.6%, says DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. In 4Q17, the major suppliers raised their prices by 10-15% on average, driven by expected strong demand from the smartphone market during the traditional busy season, and continuing brisk demands from North American datacenters.
The total server DRAM revenue of the top three DRAM suppliers (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) rose by 13.9% QoQ in 4Q17 on the back of rising average selling price (ASP), reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. The supply of server DRAM has not kept pace with the demand even as suppliers have assigned more capacity to their server product lines. Furthermore, the data center projects in North America have been contributing to the strong demand growth.
The growth momentum in global smartphone market will remain weak in 2018 due to lower demand and less replacement purchases, says TrendForce. Faced with continuous rise in the costs of upstream components, downstream mobile phone vendors have to re-consider the pricing or adjust the specification of end-products to cope with the cost pressures. The distribution of market share among the major players is expected to remain generally the same as last year. Therefore, TrendForce estimates the global smartphone production for 2018 at around 1.5 billion units, a 2.8% annual growth only, down from previously expected 5%.
According to DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, the DRAM revenue for 4Q17 grew by 14.2% QoQ to a new high, and the DRAM revenue for the entire 2017 grew by 76% YoY.
