"NAND Prices to Rise 13~18% in Q2"

Market Research Firm TrendForce Forecast Announcement

NAND flash prices are expected to record double-digit growth rates in the second quarter, following the first quarter.

On the 28th, market research firm TrendForce stated, "The fixed transaction price of NAND in the second quarter could rise by 13-18%," and predicted that "enterprise solid-state drives (eSSD) will show the highest price increase rate."

Solid-state drives (SSD) are NAND-based auxiliary storage devices. TrendForce expects eSSD prices in the second quarter to increase by 20-25% compared to the previous quarter. TrendForce explained, "eSSD demand will increase in the first half of the year due to growing demand from North American and Chinese cloud service providers (CSPs)."

TrendForce also explained that NAND manufacturers such as Japan's Kioxia and the United States' Western Digital have increased NAND factory utilization rates since the first quarter, but other suppliers are maintaining conservative production strategies. They added that NAND suppliers' inventories are decreasing and that the industry's production cut effects continue to impact the market.

For the first quarter, TrendForce forecasts that NAND prices rose 23-28% compared to the previous quarter. This figure is higher than the January forecast of 15-20%.