“iPhone 3G S” launch will help stabilize the NAND Flash price in slow season; 1HJune mainstream MLC contract price dropped 1% to 6%

 Taipei,June 9th 2009----NAND Flash contract price showed up and down in 1HJune, while the contract price for mainstream high-density MLC chips slightly declined 1% to 6% due to the slow season and quarter-end effects.Says DRAMeXchange.
     Period of May-July is traditionally regarded as the slow reason for NAND Flash related products such as memory card and UFD. Therefore, the market demand is comparably weak. Given the over one month inventory level along with the quarter-end effects, memory card makers show less incentive in NAND Flash re-stocking. On the other hand, NAND Flash suppliers offered price discount to customers during Computex Taipei Show in early June. It’ll help downstream clients to engage in sales promotion in slow season. Therefore, it resulted in the slightly price decline trend in mainstream MLC contract price.
DRAMeXchange states that currently NAND Flash suppliers still will try to stabilize price during NAND Flash slow season in order to improve their profitability. However, price is expected to be influenced by the quarter-end effect and weaker demand in slow season. Apple officially introduced new iPhone 3GS on June 8 and new iPhone will hit the American market on June 19 and gradually deliver to other countries in the near future.  The pricing for 16GB model is US$199, US$299 for 32GB model and US$99 for 8GB iPhone 3G.
The launch effect is expected to have positive impact on NAND Flash market despite of about 5% consumption of total NAND Flash demand in 2H09. Given these positive & negative factors to NAND Flash market, NAND Flash contract price is likely to slightly soften or stay stable in the short term. The contract price is expected to stabilize and gradually rise when the re-stock demand can gradually recover in the traditional hot season.

Figure-1. 32Gb MLC NAND Flash contract price trend

Source: DRAMeXchange

Figure-2. 16Gb MLC NAND Flash contract price trend

Source: DRAMeXchange