An increasing number of DRAM manufacturers are planning to expand their capacity in the fourth quarter of 2014 as DRAM market supply tightens, while bit supply could grow by nearly 30% next year following recent decreases in die size and adjustments of capacity. As a result, the industry’s oligolopy structure could face considerable challenges in 2015, among them oversupply that would eat into producers’ profit margins, said Avril Wu, assistant vice president of DRAMeXchange, a memory and storage research division of TrendForce.
As demand for tablets and smartphones is increasing, SSD demand for use in notebooks, servers and data centers is following in suit. Additionally, as the Internet of Things (IoT) is starting to further implement NAND Flash, the market for NAND Flash is expected to rise 9% in 2015 to US$26.6 billion, according to DRAMeXchange, a subsidiary of market intelligence firm TrendForce.
Prices for DRAM components grew steadily started in the beginning of second quarter due to the absence of capacity expansions in the industry, the growing obstacles faced by suppliers transitioning towards 2xnm manufacturing technology, and the anticipation towards the impending peak quarters. The DDR3 1600 MHz 4Gb prices climbed to as high as US$ 4.6 during July 18th, 2014.
According to DRAMeXchange, a division of global research firm TrendForce, global mobile DRAM revenue amounted to US$3.3 billion in the second quarter, accounting for 31% of DRAM industry value, a slight increase over 29% in the first quarter. As DRAM supply is tight worldwide, mobile DRAM prices stabilized in the second quarter.
The eased price drops in the NAND Flash market and growing OEM demands at the end of May have provided a much needed boost to the branded suppliers’ Q2 revenues, which increased by an estimated 5.6% QoQ to US$ 7.649 billion, according to Sean Yang, Research Assistant Vice President of DRAMeXchange, the memory and storage research division of TrendForce.
