With smartphone and tablet demand soaring, along with demand for things like memory cards, flash drives, SSDs and so on, it is easy to see how NAND prices have risen so much in recent times. Both May and June of this year saw continuous upward trends for NAND pricing. That was the continuation of a longer term trend which lasted until the second half of July which saw falls in NAND prices.
Digitimes reports that in the second half of July NAND prices fell by 6 to 9% across the market. The main reason is that OEM producers and system integrators ordered huge stockpiles earlier this year and late last year in fear that we would see NAND shortages later on. That shortage never materialised and since then demand has been relatively weak in the tablet, smartphone and other electronic markets meaning stockpiles still reside. Many OEMs now have excess NAND and as a result demand has fallen causing prices to drop.
Image courtesy of eTeknix
