Josephine Lien,Jessie Shen, 17 July 2012
Contract prices for NAND flash memory have stopped falling to
reflect a healthier supply-demand balance. The price stabilizing is as a result
of major producers' slowdown in chip output, according to industry sources.
Upstream chipmakers started scaling down their production in June,
and have also slowed down capacity expansion at their 12-inch fabs. The efforts
have resulted in holding prices and preventing further falls, the sources
observed.
Some of the chip suppliers moved to allocate more production
capacity for DRAM memory, the sources said. Prices for DRAM chips thus far in
2012 have been relatively stable than those for NAND flash, the sources
added.
NAND flash prices still depend very much on demand, the sources
indicated. Upcoming rollouts of new smartphones, tablets and ultrabook PCs
should trigger a fresh round of inventory replenishment around late August,
which will determine whether chip prices continue to keep stable or even go up,
the sources said.
New figures from DRAMeXchange show that early July contract prices
for 32Gb and 64Gb rose slightly while those for 16Gb parts remained flat. Prices
for 32Gb 3-bit per cell NAND also stayed unchanged at NT$2.09 on average in the
period.
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