DRAM
Negative signals appeared to the DRAM market
The Contract price negotiation is not smooth in this quarter.
The major customers such as leading smartphone vendors and DCs are not willing to final the price with such high ASP QoQ growth.
Smartphone shipment toward the middle to low end, and some customer cut their Q3 build unit to lower their high inventory pressure.
The enterprise server and DC demand is good in 2H21, but some DCs are not willing to accept the high ASP due to their own high inventory level, the RDIMM ASP increasing ratio would be less than expected.
The PC demand is not well since the late 2Q timeframe, PC OEMs cut their annual sales target due to component shortage issue and some demand decreased.
Channel UDIMM demand remained in a weak condition, DRAM vendors lower down their selling price to meet the market price.
However, the demand in this month is still less than the June timeframe.
In this month, the white brand 8Gbit DDR4 ASP decline more than 5%. The 8GB DDR4 Module selling price declined more than 10%. The channel distributors are trying to decrease their inventory level with aggressive pricing.
NAND
Both Channel and OEM client SSD demand is weak, the component shortage impacted both supply side and demand side
Channel cSSD ASP declined a lot, especially the Tier2 SSD modules.
The NAND wafer price, the major providers’ selling price is flattish with last month, which showed a negative signal to the market.
In addition, the PC shipment target adjusted down, the major PC OEMs may have high pressure to lower down their inventory level.
The PC demand is not as strong as expected and the component shortage would be another factor to force PC OEM to lower their shipment target.
The NAND wafer support to the market could be more than expected, and the fulfill rate for enterprise SSD will be better than expected in CQ3. However, the eSSD shipment would be limited by the component shortage issue.
The smartphone’s memory cost keeps increasing this quarter and smartphone vendors keep promotion activities to digest the set inventory.
The high-end Android smartphone demand is weak, and CQ3 flagship model build plan is not strong and weaker than Q2.