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Backside line: The NAND flash business is dealing with mounting stress because of a mixture of weak demand, oversupply, and declining costs. This difficult market surroundings has endured all year long, forcing reminiscence producers to reassess their manufacturing methods. Nevertheless, business consultants imagine that regardless of the present downturn, the second half of 2025 might deliver indicators of restoration as demand stabilizes and provide changes take impact.
The oversupply of NAND flash has pressured reminiscence chipmakers to implement manufacturing cuts in response to lower-than-expected orders from PC and smartphone producers. Main gamers within the business, together with Micron, Kioxia/SanDisk, Samsung, and SK hynix/Solidigm, have all introduced plans to reduce their manufacturing operations.
This technique goals to deliver provide in keeping with the revised demand forecasts, which, according to TrendForce, have been adjusted downward from an annual development fee of 30 p.c to a extra modest 10 p.c to fifteen p.c for 2025. The manufacturing cuts ought to lay the groundwork for a worth restoration, based on the publication.
The present market situations have led to a steady decline in NAND flash costs. In accordance with a LinkedIn post by reminiscence distributor Memphis Digital, flash reminiscence costs have fallen for 4 months in a row, pushed by a decline in purchases from key consumers akin to smartphone and laptop computer makers, which the corporate identifies as the principle shoppers of NAND flash.
Shrish Pant, a director analyst and expertise product chief at Gartner, informed The Register that NAND flash pricing will stay weak for the primary half of 2025 however initiatives increased bit shipments for SSDs within the second half of the 12 months.
A number of components are anticipated to contribute to a possible market restoration within the latter half of 2025. The rising demand for enterprise SSDs, pushed by Nvidia’s Blackwell-series merchandise and developments in AI server deployment, is predicted to spice up the market. In the long run, AI demand will proceed to drive the demand for higher-capacity/better-performance SSDs, Pant stated.
Moreover, China’s trade-in subsidy insurance policies have stimulated smartphone gross sales, accelerating the depletion of NAND Flash stock. Nvidia’s Challenge Digits, that includes 4TB SSD-equipped methods, is poised to drive demand for higher-capacity PC SSDs.
Moreover, DeepSeek’s breakthroughs in lowering computational energy necessities are anticipated to speed up the adoption of AI-enabled smartphones, doubtlessly rising storage demand.
Nevertheless, Pant concludes that the reminiscence market stays topic to periodic fluctuations, with NAND flash costs persevering with to observe a cyclical sample primarily based on hyperscalers’ shopping for conduct.
