SSD supply at risk — higher prices ahead

SSD prices have already increased significantly in recent months, and a new pressure point may emerge in the market. NAND manufacturers plan to reduce production in order to create a shortage and increase profitability.

Wccftech reports on this.

How will this affect the memory market?

Samsung and SK Hynix are reportedly considering reducing NAND production and focusing on the DRAM segment, which currently has higher demand and better margin indicators. Both companies have lowered their NAND production forecasts for the current year.

This move could influence different markets in different ways. The AI sector will likely be affected less, while consumer and storage devices may be affected sooner due to potential fluctuations in availability and cost.

NAND is becoming increasingly important to the AI industry's supply chain. After the presentation of the NVIDIA ICMS platform, which focuses on expanding the KV cache for agentic AI systems and storing large contextual logs, the demand for flash memory is expected to grow. The Rubin platform is mentioned in this context. It is expected that rack-based solutions alone will require 115.2 million TB of NAND flash storage by 2027, which will put pressure on the supply.

If manufacturers reduce NAND production, they may do so to raise contract prices and improve the return on production lines. Meanwhile, according to the given estimate, major players such as NVIDIA and AMD have contracted NAND volumes several quarters in advance, so the main impact may be felt again in the consumer segment, repeating past memory shortage scenarios.

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