PC market performed stable and PC OEMs are trying to increase their inventory level.
The server market remained weak momentum, the significant growth is not able to happen next year.
Smartphone market showed couple positive signal, the China leading vendors are trying to develop the emerging countries such as India, Indonesia, and Thailand.
The smartphone vendors upside the memory order, the middle to low end AP from MediaTek, and the high end AP from Qualcomm.
However, the upside order does not sustain for couple quarters yet, and it likes one-time urgent order.
Therefore, it’s still uncertain that smartphone vendors could develop the market well.
DRAM
Contract Price would hike more than estimation in the coming quarter
The on-device AI could enhance the end device’s feature and enrich the user experience.
Smartphone and PC would require extra DRAM buffer to support the on-device AI computing.
It could be a content driver for the coming year. The flagship smartphone and PC’s DRAM content might grow up more.
However, the on-device AI is more like selling point rather than obvious benefit to the end users at current stage.
It still takes time to develop the features and usage scenario.
The leading China smartphone vendors requested upside orders from the suppliers in 3Q23.
It would caused the contact price up more than other segments in the 4Q23.
The smartphone related memory solutions’ contract price might have more than 10%+ QoQ increasing in 4Q23, which suppliers tend to raise even much more.
The PC DRAM module contract price might increase high single digit QoQ in 4Q23.
Regarding the server segment, the Q4 RDIMM price is not easy to increase as the market demand stay weak.
Consumer DRAM contract price would have chance to raise high single in 4Q23.
The channel market trading volume increased, the spot price hike as well.
Both PC DRAM and consumer DRAM dealing price increased.
However, the real demand is not improving significantly, it’s more like an inventory shifting from upstream to the downstream.
This month, in the spot market,
16G DDR4 x8 original brand component up mid to low single digit.
16G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component up mid single digit.
8G DDR4 x8 original brand component up mid single digit.
8G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component up 10%+.
4G DDR3 x16 original brand component up mid single digit.
4G DDR3 x16 ETT/UTT grade component up mid to high single digit.
NAND
NAND Price up dramatically
The storage content for smartphone and PC might increase more than expected in the coming quarters as the storage BOM is relatively low.
In the channel market, the NAND wafer, component, SSD module, and embedded solutions’ price raised a lot this month.
The client SSD contract price might raise 10% around in 4Q23, which is less than the NAND solution for smartphone such as UFS and xMCP.
The current NAND supply chain inventory is high, the price hike and bottom out sentiment forced them to bank the inventory.
However, the market will be more healthy if the pricing up with well consumption from the end customers.
Otherwise, it’s difficult to sustain the pricing for long period of time. In addition, the capacity cut should remain until solid demand return.
