As the strong demand for data centers, NAND flash memory industry's Q1 revenue in 2020 increases by 8.3%

As  the strong demand for data centers, NAND flash  memory industry's Q1 revenue in 2020 increases by 8.3%

Although the epidemic has an impact on various industries,  the bit shipments of NAND flash memory in the first quarter of 2020 are flat  compared with the previous quarter. What’s more, higher average selling prices  due to the larger demand for data centers, the total revenue increased by 8.3% compared  with the last quarter, reaching 13.6 billion US dollars.

According to DRAMeXchange's  market survey, the demand for SSDs in data centers has increased since the  fourth quarter of last year. Enterprise-level SSDs are still in short supply in  the first quarter. In addition, as suppliers’ excessive inventories been almost  cleared, the inventories have come to a normal level, so contract prices of flash  memory have gradually increased. Production has been resumed after March, although  the COVID-19 has a certain impact on consumer-grade computers and smartphones,  while their production plants being shut down and the components supply chain  and logistics chain being affected a lot, either.

Due to  epidemic there are many people who are remotely working and teaching around the  world, so the demand for laptops or tablets has increased rapidly. Especially,  a big part of purchasing is from enterprises or governments, which is a quite  large. In addition, services such as remoting service and video streaming have demand  for cloud servers and data centers, so the demand for enterprise-class SSDs  remains strong.

It is  expected that due to the strong demand for overall equipment in the second  quarter, NAND flash memory will also be in short supply as the increasing market  demand, so the contract price will continue to rise. And the manufacturer's  revenue will continue to grow. In other words, SSD prices will grow.

Specific  to the situation of various manufacturers, Samsung's market share declined  slightly this quarter, while its revenue was basically the same as the previous  quarter. KIOXIA's market share increased slightly with 9.7% growth in revenue;  Western Digital's market share also slightly increased with a 12.1% growth in revenue.  Micron’s market share was basically flat with a 6.5% growth revenue. SK Hynix  ’s market share increased by one point, while its revenue apparently increased  by 19.8%; Intel ’s market share was basically flat with a 9.9% growth in  revenue.