Channel Consumer SSD and Embedded eMMC Prices Continued to Decline; Industry SSD/DRAM Modules and LPDDR Hold Steady

At the beginning of November, overall spot market demand for memory continued the sluggish condition from last month, with actual transaction remaining weak. Channel consumer SSD and embedded eMMC prices continued to decline slightly, while industry SSD, memory modules, and LPDDR4X/5X prices were generally flat.

Specifically:

Although memory manufacturers still face high NAND resource cost pressure, agents/distributors under memory manufacturers, speculative traders, and end customers from top to bottom have all accumulated relatively high inventory levels over the past six months. Facing rising cash flow risk from inventory buildup, some are willing to sell at a loss to accelerate shipments, which has led to a continuous decline in eMMC trade prices. Currently, the spot market is flooded with low-priced eMMC products across all capacity points, and end customers with ample inventory continue to stay on the sidelines. By capacity, prices for 64GB and below eMMC began adjusting downward as early as July, while 128GB/256GB eMMC have seen essentially no restocking demand since Q3 as some customers have accumulated over six months of inventory, and shipments are already under pressure. Meanwhile, memory manufacturers offer not only QLC solutions for 128GB/256GB eMMC but also stacked-die solutions based on 512Gb TLC. TLC solutions are relatively more costly, and corresponding eMMC pricing is higher. Customers prefer QLC solutions to reduce cost pressure, while some high-priced TLC solutions have no market despite being quoted. Overall, the embedded market has recently seen mostly small-batch transactions, with actual transaction prices still trending down. eMMC prices continued to fall this week, while prices of LPDDR4X/5X and UFS products remained flat.

Recently, channel market demand has been generally sluggish, with very few inquiries. Channel memory manufacturers are all facing varying degrees of shipment pressure, and the overall market remains in a bidding mode. Channel vendors can only offer limited price support within a small range to secure actual orders. This week, channel DDR4 memory module and SSD prices both edged lower, while DDR5 memory modules remained relatively firm due to the dual effects of die costs still being at high level and upstream supply being relatively tight.

Today, Flash Wafer and DDR resource prices remain temporarily unchanged.

As overseas original manufacturer DDR5 secondary die prices continue to rise and supply remains relatively tight, industry memory manufacturers have raised quotes to appropriately reflect cost pressure. Some manufacturers' domestic and international pricing systems have converged toward the same level range, but domestic customers generally have lower price acceptance than overseas customers, making price increases difficult to implement in practice. Therefore, this week industry memory module prices remain temporarily unchanged. Although industry SSD shipments are difficult due to weak demand, under the enormous cost pressure from original manufacturer high-priced wafer resources, concessions on related finished SSD prices are hard to make easily. Overall, this week industry memory module and SSD prices are basically unchanged.