China Covid-19 is under the massive infection period, the economic activities are sluggish.
China society might get through this tough period earlier than expected due to the fully loosen policy.
Therefore, the demand from China market might recover sooner.
Memory consumption gets worse than expected in 4Q22 and 2023.
The smartphone shipment projection revised down due to the worse than expected sales in 4Q22, and the inventory hike unexpectedly.
Moreover, the shipment unit might not able to grow next year.
Regarding the server market, couple leading Datacenters’ demand cut a lot this month.
The weak worldwide economic perspective forced them to slow down the investment.
In addition, the intel Sapphire Rapids mainstream CPU mass production would delay one quarter to 2Q23.
The new platform delay would be a headwind to the server build as well.
DRAM
DRAM demand gets worse and the ASP declined continued
The slowing down of new server platform, it will limit the RDIMM5 penetration in 2023.
Suppliers have less willing to dump the goods due to weak demand, they are trying to slow down the price declining ratio in 1Q23 after two quarters severe price drop.
However, the demand gets worse and the price downturn would not bottomed soon.
The Channel demand is not improving this month, but some Jan. 23 pull in demand happened.
The Spot price would drop more in the coming quarter.
In 1Q23, the contract price might have 10%+ declining, and the Spot DRAM price deduction might be less than the contract price.
This month, in the Channel market, the DRAM trading price dropped,
16G DDR4 x8 original brand component declined high single digit.
16G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component declined 10%+.
8G DDR4 x8 original brand component declined high single digit.
8G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component declined 10%+.
4G DDR3 x16 original brand component declined mid single digit.
4G DDR3 x16 ETT/UTT grade component declined 10%.
16G DDR4 x8 original brand component declined high single digit.
16G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component declined 10%+.
8G DDR4 x8 original brand component declined high single digit.
8G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component declined 10%+.
4G DDR3 x16 original brand component declined mid single digit.
4G DDR3 x16 ETT/UTT grade component declined 10%.
NAND
NAND ASP declined continued with poor market perspective
Compared with DRAM, NAND’s oversupply situation is more serious and it would spend longer time to see the price bottom.
In the 1Q23, the contract price would decline, especially high density solutions in order to stimulate the content growth.
Regarding the raw NAND, the current low price might not drop too much in the coming quarter, but the high price in 4Q22 would face high pressure to adjust down the quotation much lower.
The Channel SSD price declined this month, and the shipment is not well.
The China module houses have manpower limitation issue due to Covid-19 situation
In addition, the China SSD assembly ability is low and it might recover after Lunar Chinese New Year.