YG PRESS NEWS – NAND market: a new hope in late 2023?

According to Yole Intelligence, part of Yole group, in the NAND Market Monitor, the NAND market has faced numerous challenges in recent years, including a global pandemic, conflicts in Europe, trade tensions with China, and widespread inflation. Additionally, the market has experienced fab outages, supply chain issues, the entry of a new competitor from China, and industry consolidation. These events have reinforced the idea that uncertainty is the only constant in the memory markets.
Looking ahead, the long-term prospects for the NAND market are mixed. The market is influenced by emerging megatrends that drive significant growth in data generation and storage requirements for local, edge, and cloud applications. The demand for NAND is further boosted by the ongoing replacement of hard-disk drives (HDDs) with solid-state drives (SSDs) based on NAND technology. However, the competitive dynamics in the NAND market are challenging, with several major suppliers, historically low profit margins, and increasing capital requirements.
The demand for NAND is driven by various factors, including enterprise SSDs used by hyperscalers and traditional enterprise OEMs, the growing adoption of SSDs in PCs and gaming consoles, and the continuous increase in content storage in smartphones and other mobile devices. These segments will remain the primary drivers of NAND consumption, but emerging trends such as AI and VR adoption, autonomous driving, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to contribute to future growth.

In terms of key players, Samsung is expanding its manufacturing capacity in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, and Xi’an, China. a Kioxia/Western Digital merger is rumored (in lieu of a Kioxia IPO), while SK Hynix has acquired Intel’s NAND/SSD business, which has been renamed Solidigm. Despite its relatively small market size, Micron remains a leader in 3D NAND technology. China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) has made impressive technological progress but faces uncertainties due to recent sanctions imposed by the US… For more information about this analysis, please contact us!