Samsung has lost a severe amount of NAND memory wafers during a brief power outage in a NAND flash plant from the Korean chip giant. On the 9th of March this year, the fab in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, lost power for about 30 minutes. It's estimated that the incident will affect 3.5% of global NAND flash supply in March.
Taiwanese website TechNews reports that 50,000 to 60,000 wafers were damaged. That should account for approximately 11% of Samsung’s NAND flash memory production in March. The accident will likely not have a large impact on Samsung's profit as the company is insured for these kinds of incidents. Also, Samsung is said to have sufficient inventory of NAND flash chips.
Nevertheless, the power outage may still influence the overall market supply and prices in the coming weeks. The NAND flash memory market suffers from a slight oversupply which means lower memory contract prices for NAND manufacturers, according to DRAMeXchange.
The oversupply is caused by traditional lower demand at the beginning of the year and because NAND manufacturers are getting better in producing 3D NAND chips, which means higher yields.
