Analyst firm Trendforce has predicted the average selling price of NAND flash. SSD (Solid State Drive) and microSD card Up to 15% less during the quarter. It’s already down about 25% in the last quarter, impacting the biggest manufacturers. Kioxia, Solidigm, Micron and WDC cut production to reduce market supply.
Weak consumer demand and Enterprise SSD Combined with Samsung’s reluctance to continue producing as much NAND as it can, the price drop we’ve seen across SSD and microSD offerings over the past 12 months has led to the gradual phasing out of smaller capacities. It is likely to be abolished and continue unabated.
Samsung is the largest NAND flash vendor and has already committed to investing heavily in research and development to stay ahead of its rivals. SK Hynix and Micron have announced that they will launch in 2022. 238 layers and 232 layers Each product, on paper, dramatically reduces the cost of a solid state drive terabyte.
No vendor released yet for obvious reasons Sequencer (Penta Level Cell) NAND, the next technological breakthrough to enable even cheaper and higher capacity SSDs.
Data Catastrophe by Christmas 2023?
The cheapest 1TB microSD card is currently available on Amazon for around $75, down nearly 50% from a year ago. We don’t expect the price to halve, but a further 30% drop by the end of the year seems reasonable. This brings the price of a 1 TB microSD card closer to $50.
This could impact smaller capacities (512GB, 256GB, 128GB), and we expect 64GB and 32GB microSDs to be pushed out of the market entirely.
the same applies USB flash drive The cheapest stock 256GB model currently retails for around $10, and vendors rely on multi-pack offers to attract capacity-low customers. The fact that many modern laptops do not have Type-A connectors or microSD card slots also dramatically reduces the size of the overall target market.
The most exciting market remains that of SSDs, and as prices continue to drop, customers are enjoying an absolute field day. The cheapest SSD per TB at the time of writing is the Leven JS600 ($74.99 for 1.92 TB), and with another 30% drop over the next 9 months it will be on par with smaller capacity hard drives like the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 I guess.
These cheaper models are 2.5 inches. SATA is a storage device, de facto Equipped with a SATA connector, it should also quickly replace external hard drives with capacities up to 2TB. 2.5 inch drives are being phased out and replaced by M.2 PCIe drives.
Larger hard drives are safe for now, but it’s only a matter of time before the next tier (3 TB, 4 TB) comes along. Leven’s 4TB SSD retails for $180, which is still about double the price of a 4TB WD Passport hard drive.
