Growing demand for SSDs could stabilize NAND flash memory prices

The ongoing decrease of NAND flash prices could come to an end by the third quarter of this year due to a growing demand of SSDs. Adoption of SSDs has been accelerated by the current relative low prices of the drives. The long-term outlook is that NAND flash prices will continue to drop.

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The fall of NAND flash prices might come to an end by the third quarter of this year, according to the Taiwanese website Digitimes. NAND flash prices started to go down at the end of last year but in the second quarter of this year the price drops slowed to about 10%. In the third quarter NAND flash prices might continue to drop, but likely at a slower pace with the possibility that the price drops come to a halt.

Because NAND flash has become cheaper, the demand for SSDs is growing. PC manufacturers have started to fit PCIe NVMe SSDs in their devices and sources of Digitimes expect that volume production of computers with PCIe NVMe SSDs will start in the third quarter of this year. This year it's also expected that consumer devices will more and more contain PCIe NVMe drives instead of the SATA drives that are currently common.

Besides a larger demand for SSDs, also smartphone manufacturers are contributing to a growing demand of NAND flash memory, even despite the fact that smartphone sales have slowed down. The demand of NAND flash memory continues to increase because the storage capacity per device is rising.

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The price of SSDs dropped about 50% compared to November last year, according to Digitimes.

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