According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.
As rising inflationary pressure continues to weaken the global economy, demand for various consumer applications has been downgraded since the second quarter and is expected not improve until the end of the year. Although server demand is stable, a period of inventory adjustment has been ushered in, which exacerbates oversupply in the NAND Flash market. According to TrendForce investigations, since sellers are no longer locked into fixed pricing, NAND Flash price declines in the third quarter expanded from the original forecast of 8~13% to 13~18% QoQ. If manufacturers' production capacity planning is not curtailed, this decline is likely to continue into the fourth quarter.
TrendForce provides the following data for the EDA software market:
According to TrendForce investigations, 2Q22 DRAM industry revenue reached US$25.59 billion, growing 6.5% QoQ. The primary reason for 2Q22 revenue growth stemmed from an increase in bit shipments from certain DRAM suppliers. Although PC and mobile DRAM were hit hard by inflation and weak demand, momentum in the server DRAM market remained strong in 1H22, driving quarterly shipment growth at the three top manufacturers to 5~10%.
According to TrendForce investigations into the DRAM market, under pressure from ever-increasing output, Korean manufacturers have significantly increased their willingness to compromise on pricing in order to stimulate buying from distributors and customers, leading to a steady expansion of falling prices. In addition to Korean manufacturers enthusiastically slashing prices, low-priced chips from the spot market are also circulating in the market. Other suppliers have no choice but to follow suit and fervently reduce pricing for sales, rapidly exacerbating the 3Q consumer DRAM price drop from the original estimate of 8~13% to a quarterly decline of 13-18%.