14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that low demand is not the only issue that the semiconductor market is facing, at least not the only one anymore, as Toshiba has gone through a more or less unfortunate experience that will significantly reduce its shipments for the month.
After getting cheaper and cheaper over the course of November, NAND Flash chips began to see some rebound.
Now, it seems that an unexpected development has led to spot prices of NAND chips to grow a bit more.
The development was one that was definitely not in the market's plans and will have negative consequences that will be felt during January and/or February, 2011.
Basically, Toshiba suffered a particularly nasty power outage on December 8.
Said power outage led to its NAND Flash production being disrupted for two days, which means that its November shipments will end up 10-20% lower than initially planned.
While definitely not good news for the company, this also led to the aforementioned rise in spot prices.
For those interested in numbers, 16 Gb chips grew by 3-4%, to US$4.26, while 32 Gb chips increased to US$5.18.
The report recently published by Digitmes is the source of this information and also states that 8 Gb and 64 Gb chips saw a mild price rise of their own.
As far as Toshiba itself goes, the company will, naturally, not see anything positive come out of this unfortunate power outage, as is evident form the above mentioned more than probable drop in shipments.
Now only that, but even the worldwide market might see NAND Flash supply decrease, based on Toshiba's share, by 3.5-7%.
It is this drop in global supply that will be felt during the first and second months of next year and might spur further spot price growth, though it remains to be seen how quickly Toshiba can recover from this event.