Nanya Technology expects DRAM prices to fall this quarter

TrendForce said last month that the shipments of consumer electronics such as smartphones, TVs, and Chromebooks in the second half of this year were lower than expected. At the same time, the demand for retail storage products such as memory cards and U disks is still in a sluggish state. The increase in inventory levels has reduced the purchasing power of NAND flash memory buyers. It is predicted that the price of NAND flash memory products will begin to fall in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Image: Nanya

Coincidentally, recently, Nanya Technology, the world’s fourth-largest memory chip manufacturer (after Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron), said in its 2021Q3 financial report that it is expected that in the fourth quarter, DRAM prices will be adjusted in the short term and may fall. The reason is the decrease in market demand. However, the reasons mentioned by Nanya Technology are a bit different, mainly related to various shortages in the industry chain, covering the consumer, server, and mobile device markets.

At present, Nanya Technology is preparing its first DDR5 product with a 10nm-level process, and trial production is proceeding as planned. What’s strange is that Nanya Technology still seems to be focusing on lower capacity 8 Gbit cores. This is different from other competitors mostly focusing on 16 Gbit cores. In the past quarter, Nanya Technology has achieved record profits, with quarterly revenue growth of 5.3% and a year-on-year increase of 55.6%.

If the price of DRAM drops, it is good news for servers that require a lot of memory. Normally, DRAM occupies a considerable part of the cost. In addition, smartphone manufacturers will also be pleased that they can lower the price of the phone or configure a larger capacity of memory.