NAND prices drop

By Jim Carbone -- Purchasing, 4/2/2008 9:56:00 AM

NAND flash memory prices are falling due to oversupply caused by the transition to 12-inch wafers and sluggish demand from cell phone handset, digital camera, and USB flash drive manufacturers. However, suppliers say weak demand is seasonal and will pick up later in the year.

Suppliers note that weak demand resulted in a glut of NAND parts in the first quarters of 2006 and 2007 and the same thing happened this year.

Still contract prices for NAND fell up to 15% in the second half of March because of oversupply, according to researcher DRAMeXchange in Taiwan. The price of single level cell (SLC) NAND chips declined greater than multi level cell (MLC) chips.

NAND tags also fell on the spot market. For instance, a 16 gigabit (Gb) SLC NAND chip dropped from $19.13 at the beginning of March to $16.69 in late March. In the MLC segment, price erosion was. The average price of a MLC NAND chip fell from $5.11 in early March to $4.91 at the end of the month.

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NAND memory prices to fall