1HMay NAND Flash average contract price declined 1-8pc due to slow season effect

TAIWAN: Impacted by 2Q slow season effect and instability in partial financial markets, 1H May NAND Flash average contract price roughly declined 1 percent to 8 percent.

Currently cost-competitive TLC is mainly applied on the memory card and UFD products. Since 2Q is the traditionally slow season for memory card and UFD while TLC white-brand memory card supply is increasing, according to DRAMeXchange.NAND Flash suppliers adjusted down 1H May TLC chip contract price 1-8 percent at the purpose of promotion in slow season. Currently, MLC is still broadly used in electronic system products given the better performance and reliability.

Benefited from the relatively steady OEM orders from some system product customers to partially relax the impact from memory card & UFD slow season effect, 1H May mainstream MLC average contract price slightly declined 1-3 percent, comparably stable than TLC price.

Currently, memory card makers will tend to properly restock some NAND Flash required in 2Q slow season and gradually raise the procurement portion of TLC white-box memory card, which result in the less demand for MLC in 2Q10. However, NAND Flash suppliers will also appropriately control 2Q10 output growth to ease the impact for slow season effect.

Moreover, NAND Flash suppliers expect the 3Q10 restock demand from system product customers to be better than 2Q10 so that it will help stabilize and enhance the following MLC pricing trend as well. Besides, the turbulences in some financial markets have been easing due to recent international collaboration efforts, which will help NAND Flash end-product demand sustain to recover in 2H hot season.

Though the mixed pro and con views held by suppliers & buyers toward the following pricing trend may pose the up-and-down consolidation conditions to last in the short term. However, DRAMeXchange expect the price trend of different NAND Flash products will mainly reflect the different application demand required as well as cost-down benefits from different process technologies employed.

DRAMeXchange expects MLC price to demonstrate the relatively stable trend compared with TLC in 2Q slow season.