4Q22 DRAM contract price drop expanded to 18~23%, also spot market has no luck to escape from the recession

---

---

According to TrendForce, prices for 4Q22 contracts were mostly finalized in October in contract market. The QoQ decline in the overall DRAM ASP has now reached 18~23%. This discrepancy is due to the fact that Samsung maintains a rather aggressive approach for pricing. Regarding 1Q23, TrendForce has revised the QoQ decline in the overall ASP from 5~10% to 15~20% provided that Samsung continues to be this competitive. TrendForce is also not ruling out the possibility that prices could drop by more than 20% for some types of DRAM products.

As for spot market, October saw spot transactions at their lowest level so far for this year. Moving into November, the ongoing decline in DRAM spot prices will unlikely ease anytime soon as China maintains its strict zero-COVID policy and enforces lockdown for local outbreaks. Furthermore, the major DRAM suppliers have made substantial price concessions in their contract negotiations, thereby creating downward pressure on spot prices as well. TrendForce has observed that the average spot price of the mainstream 1Gb DDR4 chips has been falling rapidly since October 24 with the daily decline exceeding 1%.

Until November 9, the sequential drop in the average spot price of 1Gb DDR4 chips has reached 8.36%. At the same time, spot prices of server DRAM modules have now fallen below the lowest point in the previous cyclical downturn and arrived around US$70. This indicates that there is a considerable room for a further drop in contract prices in 1Q23. Regarding weekly change in the spot price trend of the mainstream chips (i.e., DDR4 1Gx8 2666MT/s), the average spot price slid by 2.30% from US$ 2.222 last week to US$2.171 this week.

（Image credit: Unsplash）