Rising Resource Prices Continue to Push Up Costs; DDR5 SODIMM and UDIMM Prices Climb This Week

This week, DDR5 SODIMM and UDIMM prices have mainly followed the upward trend in resource prices. However, with no signs of demand recovery ahead of the back-to-school season, the overall market is showing a pattern of "rising prices but shrinking volumes."

Since the third quarter, demand has remained sluggish despite the traditional peak season. Customers are sitting on high inventory levels while shifting to a wait-and-see stance on restocking, slowing down deliveries on forward orders. In some application markets, there have even been isolated cases of customers returning or reselling finished storage products. Although memory manufacturers have held prices at certain levels without proactively cutting prices to boost shipments, the combination of a weak market, an oversupply of low-end products, and a continuous influx of supply from the trading sector is likely to make it increasingly difficult for memory manufacturers to move their inventory in the short term.

On the upstream resource side, Flash Wafer prices remained largely unchanged today, while DDR5 16Gb eTT prices rose to $24.40.

Ahead of the back-to-school season, no significant restocking activity has been observed in the channel market, with demand from channel customers, including OEMs, remaining generally flat. However, with DDR5 resource prices rising recently and supply remaining relatively tight, channel vendors have raised DDR5 module prices in line with increasing costs. This week, DDR5 UDIMM prices rose across the board, while DDR4 UDIMM and SSD prices remained flat.

After nearly two months of price increases, the unit price of industry-grade DDR5 secondary-grade die has climbed above $1.50/Gb, narrowing the price gap between domestic and overseas original manufacturer die to less than 10%. Memory manufacturers had previously taken the lead in raising finished product quotes for overseas markets and pushing through the price increases. Meanwhile, driven by the continued price hikes of domestic die in the mainland market, memory manufacturers have recently begun raising finished product quotes accordingly, with some mainland customers starting to accept the new pricing on specific high-end projects. This week, prices for 16GB DDR5 SODIMM saw a slight increase, while other prices remained unchanged for now.

Recently, LP4X/5X resource prices have continued to rise. Factoring in yield rates, the per-unit resource cost has exceeded $1.90/Gb. Although most LPDDR finished products are currently being sold below resource cost, low-end LP products continue to attract end customers with low prices, and some customers have even resold inventory, further disrupting the market. As a result, memory manufacturers have been unable to pass the rising resource costs on to finished products in the short term. This week, prices for LPDDR4X/5X as well as embedded eMMC and UFS remained unchanged.