“The recent increase in NAND flash pricing has benefitted memory chip makers, but also has served as a major damper on the market for SSDs used in notebooks,” said Michael Yang, senior analyst for mobile and emerging memories at iSuppli. “About 90 percent of an SSD’s value consists of NAND flash memory, so with the pricing for such chips rising, consumer and corporate adoption of solid-state storage has been slowed.”
Average pricing for 16Gbit density Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash rose to $4.10 in the second quarter of 2009, a dramatic 127.8 percent increase from $1.80 in the fourth quarter of 2008. The attached figure presents iSuppli’s estimate of average pricing for this common density of NAND flash.
iSuppli: 16Gbit Density Multilevel Cell NAND Flash Price Forecast (Pricing in US Dollars)
Source: iSuppli, July 2009In order to return to profitability, NAND flash suppliers in 2008 cut capacity to reflect weak market demand. This caused pricing to rise, despite continued poor sales.
SSDs can serve as replacements for Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) in personal computers, storing data by using flash memory rather than traditional rotating media. Prospects for SSDs had been boosted by the rising demand for notebook PCs, whose low storage requirements and long battery lives made them a good fit for solid-state storage.
“However, with the rise in NAND pricing, even a 32Gbyte MLC SSD represents a major addition to the final price of a notebook PC,” Yang said.
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