CFM: Divergence in Server Customers' Price Acceptance for eSSDs; Q3 Price Hikes by Memory Original Manufacturers Range from 10% to 30%

Driven by the ongoing impact of export controls, the shortage of advanced domestic computing cards is spreading further, leaving servers struggling with mismatched components. As supporting storage, 3.84TB eSSDs have currently accumulated high inventory levels among domestic server end customers.

From a demand perspective, there is a clear divergence between domestic and international markets. In North America, beyond major cloud service providers, emerging computing power leasing firms are also seeing robust demand for eSSDs. Their procurement of supporting memory continues to rise alongside the expansion of GPU clusters, showing no signs of slowing down. In contrast, the domestic market is currently undergoing a phase of adjustment characterized by "high inventory, weak new demand, and inverted spot and contract prices." Meanwhile, as cloud providers increase the proportion of self-developed drives, large-scale restocking demand remains limited in the short term. Furthermore, the increasingly diversified domestic NAND supply channels are dampening the procurement momentum for eSSDs in the domestic server market in the near term. Additionally, with the gap in server RDIMMs persisting, different customers exhibit varying levels of acceptance for server memory prices.

Driven by these demand disparities, domestic and international customers show different attitudes toward eSSD price hikes: domestic customers have limited willingness to absorb continuous price increases, while the North American market demonstrates higher acceptance due to strong demand support. Consequently, pricing increases for Q3 eSSDs have diverged among different memory original manufacturers. CFM estimates that the overall price hikes will range from 10% to 30%.