Western Digital Warns NAND Flash Prices Increasing 55+%

D

DPI

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Memory prices continue to rise, with the world’s top five memory chip manufacturers, including Western Digital (WDC), notifying their distributors and consumer customers on December 5th that they will shorten the quoting period for their two major products – HDD and NAND Flash memory. Instead, they will adopt a pricing strategy of periodic adjustments to cope with the rapidly changing storage market.

WDC predicts “weekly increases” in quotations. The content of the letter sent by WDC to its channel customers is as follows:

Flash – We anticipate periodic price increases over the next few quarters, with the cumulative increase likely surpassing 55% of current levels.

HDD – We will continue to review pricing on a weekly basis, with increases expected through the first half of next year.

We have aligned our production capacity to the current demand environment, so our ability to respond to unplanned demand and orders is limited. Please ensure any changes to your orders are communicated as early as possible. Anticipate extended lead times for any unplanned demand.
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Source (paywalled): https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20231206PD213/western-digital-nand-flash-price-increase-hdd.html
Non-paywalled: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2023/12/07/news-price-talks-every-week-western-digital-notifies-customers-of-weekly-price-adjustments
 
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NAND prices were too low, they cut back production, now supplies are constrained and prices are going up. It’s not price fixing because all of them decided in their own to cut back on production to “solve” the over supply issues…
 
Lakados said:
NAND prices were too low, they cut back production, now supplies are constrained and prices are going up. It’s not price fixing because all of them decided in their own to cut back on production to “solve” the over supply issues…
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That was my sense too. Only reason it seemed worth bringing up was for people hoping the recent drops to the $200 mark on higher-end 4TB Gen4 consumer drives would keep dropping if they waited a bit more. That party is probably over - not overnight, but there's a timer on current pricing.
 
DPI said:
That was my sense too. Only reason it seemed worth bringing up was for people hoping the recent drops to the $200 mark on higher-end 4TB Gen4 consumer drives would keep dropping if they waited a bit more. That party is probably over - not overnight, but there's a timer on current pricing.
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It was back in early November that Samsung announced that they were raising their wafer prices by 10-20% for the first half of 2024, and increasing their fab time pricing by similar amounts in that time frame due to increased demand. Micron and SK Hynix adjusted their pricing similarly citing demand, as storage on the server side is finally making the primary switch to solid state, and RAM demand has nearly tripled as AI needs a flapton of it, and consumer devices are increasing the amount they ship with. Either way, Memory be it NAND, DDR, or GDDR is expected to go up around 44% on average as the new generation of devices comes out in the first half of 2024.
 
Lakados said:
It was back in early November that Samsung announced that they were raising their wafer prices by 10-20% for the first half of 2024, and increasing their fab time pricing by similar amounts in that time frame due to increased demand. Micron and SK Hynix adjusted their pricing similarly citing demand, as storage on the server side is finally making the primary switch to solid state, and RAM demand has nearly tripled as AI needs a flapton of it, and consumer devices are increasing the amount they ship with. Either way, Memory be it NAND, DDR, or GDDR is expected to go up around 44% on average as the new generation of devices comes out in the first half of 2024.
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Ouch. Bad for us. Very bad if someone was planning a new build or major system upgrade. But what goes down must / usually go back up in this business.
 
Building a new computer now.
7950x
2x 4tb drive
96gb ram

Not too bad though I overpaid my credit card by $400 and I’m getting double pay for two days Christmas and New Year’s Day and that’s 465 base pay.

But even when you make close to $120,000 a year, you still want stuff to be as cheap as possible
 
Lakados said:
NAND prices were too low, they cut back production, now supplies are constrained and prices are going up. It’s not price fixing because all of them decided in their own to cut back on production to “solve” the over supply issues…
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If the mfgr's hadn't gotten sooooo friggin greedy during the pandemic & overproduced to the max, prices could have remained steady or close to it, and they & we would not be in this position now... it's their own damned fault !
DPI said:
That was my sense too. Only reason it seemed worth bringing up was for people hoping the recent drops to the $200 mark on higher-end 4TB Gen4 consumer drives would keep dropping if they waited a bit more. That party is probably over - not overnight, but there's a timer on current pricing.
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Yea, that party IS definitely over, but most of the major price increases will probably come right around the 1st of '24, so as not to kill Christmas sales numbers....

This was exactly the reason I stocked up on both 2TB & 4TB drives for my late '23 & early '24 client builds...I knew it would NOT last forever :D

Randall Stephens said:
Gotta pay for the r and d somehow. Just waiting on the consumer 8tb ssds to be affordable
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Exactly what R&D are you referring to ?

All the essential R&D on NAND/DRAM/GDDR etc was done a long, long time ago....with the possible exception of how to (continue to) stack more layers/chips together & control/reduce heat output, which ATM is merely tweaking/optimizations/firmware improvements....

As for the 8TB ssd prices, they will come down some eventually, once that size becomes a bit more mainstream & after people have satisfied their fascination with running multiple 4TB units, which were also way overpriced until recently...
 
$200 for 4TB, bah. I bought my Samsung 870 EVOs for like $168 back in that sale some months ago.

Anyway, sad to see this trend end if true...
 
Yeah I bought 2x 4tb to add to my 3rd all I need for a while. Yeah I am saving. After I max out 401k and pay rent and house tax’s I have 55k to spend how I want. Going to start stocks soon.

I want 8TB drive to come down.
 
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