In spite of increasing willingness of NAND customer's to stock, memory price reduction may continue by the end of 2019.

updated at 2019-05-27 16:56:51

In view of the current uncertain market situation of memory, Gou Jiazhang, general manager of SMI, estimated that the current price of NAND Flash is near the lowest value, and that if it falls again in the second half of 2019, price reduction range would be about the percentage of single digit. However, DRAM is expected to continue to fall until the end of this year.
In response to media interviews, Gou Jiazhang said that as the willingness of NAND customers to stock is increasing, strong demand for solid state drives (SSDs) at retail and enterprise will significantly improve their operations in this second quarter. When more and more new applications are coming out in the future, memory may benefit from them and still have great growth momentum.



In view of the industrial trend, Gou Jiazhang pointed out that the current inventory level is extremely high in short term. He also admitted that the mainland is particularly affected by the Sino-US trade war, with staggering industrial decline, while the United States seems to be less suffered, together with gradually increasing demand. He thought that only if the trade war becomes ease and demand rise in the second half of this year, could there be a chance of recovery for the mainland factories.
According to Gou Jiazhang, the mainland market for mobile phones and data centers is not performing well, while the performance of the North American market in data centers is slightly better.
However, Gou Jiazhang believed that compared with the past, the yield of the mainland's NAND Flash plants has increased significantly and can achieve massive production. It is expected that this situation would have a positive impact on the mainland market in the second half of this year, but the impact on the global memory industry is limited. In addition, he added that SMI has established cooperative relations with UNIS Group, YMTC and other factories, and is confident of operation in the mainland market in the future.
As far as application is concerned, Gou Jiazhang revealed that the data center and enterprise market are still digesting inventory at present. In the second half of 2019, American data center factories are expected to start pulling demand, on the contrary, the mainland factories are more passive. Recently, there has been an obvious boom in consumer products since the second quarter, but this situation is estimated to continue for 1 to 2 months. Gou Jiazhang admitted that the whole industry is still cautious and conservative about this year's market situation, and that the results still depend on the trend of the trade war.