As NAND Flash Prices Fall, Samsung Changes MicroSD Card Plans

Small-size channel distributors will find that, to their likely dismay, Samsung won't be shipping them microSD cards anymore, at least for a while.

One wouldn't have expected that, even after the whole HDD crisis, however overblown, NAND Flash memory would experience a low demand period.

Alas, the flash storage market is going through what the DRAM industry had experienced just before it got locked in a descending spiral that brought prices so low that Elpida essentially went bankrupt.

NAND hasn't quite begun its journey down that road yet, but the supply-demand ratio isn't what companies involved in the market want it to be.

Both solid-state drives and memory cards have been plagued by disappointing consumer interest. Already some distributors in China are in danger of going bankrupt because of the resulting price falls.

To stave off further decline, Samsung has chosen to take a more active role in who gets what.

According to this Digitimes report, the IT player will no longer ship microSD card to small-size channel distributors. By controlling supply, it believes it can stop prices from further undermining the market.

We aren't exactly convinced that Samsung will pull off what it hopes for. After all, some medium-size distributors have been selling microSD cards and flash memory wafers at very low prices as well.

Naturally, end-users don't have much of a reason to lament price drops. Not a direct reason anyhow. After all, cheaper microSD cards means cheaper phones and digital cameras.

Nevertheless, having corporations get hit with financial troubles doesn't actually do much to help the job security of employees. In this, the NAND segment is no different from the display industry, or any other layer of the worldwide economy.

Fortunately, Samsung can't be said to depend on microSD cards enough for its operations to be placed in too much danger. That means that there shouldn't be any mass layoffs because of this.