Smartphone demand during China’s Labor Day was strong, but shipments dropped significantly afterward.
Vendors are expecting strong sales from the China 618 event.
Apple has launched a strong promotional campaign in the Chinese market, highly intent on regaining market share during the 618 event.
PC OEMs are expecting AI PCs could stimulate replacement demand in the second half of 2024. However, it’s not easy to see a significant benefit due to the lack of useful AI applications.
China’s datacenter sector has seen some pull in demand, and most of CMCC’s bidding orders have been released.
However, the overall server market has not shown any obvious improvement so far.
DRAM
Regarding the contract price for the upcoming quarter, a QoQ ASP growth of more than 10% is likely.
The RDIMM price could increase by over 10%, especially for RDIMM5, as major vendors focus on HBM production.
RDIMM4 ASP growth may be less than that of RDIMM5 due to high inventory levels and the platform transition to DDR5.
Additionally, some OEMs are selling their RDIMM4 stock to the market, which could negatively impact RDIMM4 price increases.
Currently, there is a small price gap between RDIMM5 4800 and 5600, but they might be priced the same in Q3 2024.
The UDIMM price might increase less than RDIMM, as PC OEMs have high inventory levels.
However, the DDR4/DDR5 price gap is unlikely to shrink obviously in Q3 2024 for both the PC and server markets.
The consumer market demand has not improved.
However, Enterprise HDD demand has increased due to the boost in AI demand.
Channel demand is weak, and trading prices are down.
Nevertheless, suppliers’ DDR4/5 prices for module houses continue to rise this month.
Channel module sales are lower than last month, and the 618 demand is worse than last year.
This month, in the spot market,
16G DDR5 x8 original brand component down low single digit%.
16G DDR4 x8 original brand component is stable.
16G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component is stable.
8G DDR4 x8 original brand component down low single digit.
8G DDR4 x8 ETT/UTT grade component down high single digit.
4G DDR3 x16 original brand component down low single digit.
4G DDR3 x16 ETT/UTT grade component is stable.
NAND
The contract price for NAND solutions could rise by more than 10% in the third quarter of 2024.
The NAND suppliers’ OPM keeps improving.
PC OEMs will continue purchasing cSSDs despite having sufficient inventory.The adoption rate of QLC cSSDs could increase to reduce costs.
The current QLC cSSD price gap is around 10% compared to TLC cSSDs.
Channel cSSDs demand is weak.
The demand during the 618 shopping festival is not strong, which places significant pressure on small module makers and brokers.
The raw NAND price from major suppliers keeps increasing.
China customers accepted the offer for embedded solutions, but their volumes are not significant.
However, Taiwan customers have no willing to take the NAND wafer this month.
Some brokers are selling raw NAND at low prices because the channel market has remained sluggish for too long.