14 DAY TRIAL // Once again, market watchers have taken a look at the most recent developments on the semiconductor market, and it appears that the segment of NAND Flash memory, as far as MLC chips go at least, survived December without any major price changes.
Over the past few months, the semiconductor market has been going through what one may see less than favorable times.
Things were more unfortunate on the DRAM market, where prices have been falling and will keep doing so, until they hit a proverbial bottom in the first quarter of 2011.
Meanwhile, NAND Flash memory chips fell for a while themselves, before some events led to a small rebound.
For instance, not long ago, a power outage in Yokkaichi, Japan, affected Toshiba's shipments, and supply of NAND Flash chips is set to fell by up to 20% in January and February, 2011.
Now, a certain report made by Digitmes says that, throughout December, contract prices of MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash chips stayed flat.
Mainstream 16 Gb and 32 Gb parts ended up with contract prices of US$3-3.50 and US$4-5, respectively.
Tablets and smartphones are still seen as the main driving force behind the demand for flash memory and Toshiba, Micron and Samsung all plan to expand their capacities next year.
With this to boost supply, however, prices may once again start to suffer from serious downward pressure, since demand has to be strong if prices are to be maintained.
Regardless, overall contract quotes are expected to actually rise during the first three-month period of next year, especially with likely booming demand on the tablet sector (many new slates are set to debut at CES after all).
As for what will happen later, the segment could go both ways depending on how well, if at all, the supply-demand ratio is maintained.