TrendForce：1H’July NAND Flash Contract Prices Stay Flat, End Market Sales to Influence Future Price Movements

According to DRAMeXchange, a research division of TrendForce, the 1H'July NAND Flash contract prices have remained relatively unchanged due to the gradually waning OEM and channel market demands. As the OEM customers have already begun displaying a reserved attitude towards 3Q13 sales, the replenishment demand that is typically associated with the new products has ended up being weaker than expected. The intent to undertake further restocking efforts, moreover, has lessened now that most of the manufacturersfoinventories have approached healthy levels. Although the NAND Flash market supplies have not shown any major growth compared to Q2, with the NAND Flash buyers being conservative towards end market sales, the NAND Flash contract prices have largely stayed flat throughout 1H’July.

Looking at the demand side, while the system OEM clients have mostly taken a conservative stance towards future market sales, the replenishment effort intended for the new product releases is still expected to gradually increase on a monthly basis (the momentum, however, might not be as strong as originally anticipated). As for the memory card and UFD markets, even though the purchase order demands have yet to increase during the peak quarter, many scenarios are still prone to being changed in the last two months of 3Q13; how the sales performances will ultimately turn out, along with how many purchase orders there will be, for instance, can be more accurately assessed only when factors such as back to school demand and the national Chinese holiday are taken into account. As shown by the research conducted by TrendForce, the Q3 NAND Flash consumption is still likely to grow by more than 10% compared to Q2. Our expectations of the NAND Flash wafer production levels and the migration progress for this quarter remain unchanged. The NAND Flash Q3 supply amount is expected to increase by only around 6-7% QoQ. From the aforementioned events, it is predicted that before the peak quarter signs become evident in the end market, the NAND Flash buyer's pull-in momentum will only increase by a slight amount. For August, the NAND Flash contract prices are likely to either stay flat or exhibit a minor amount of growth.