SSD prices could be driven up after a recent manufacturing disaster

pcinvasion.com:

If you’ve been looking to buy an SSD, you may want to act quickly before prices begin to sting. A recent contamination disaster at two of Western Digital’s manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of of approximately 6.5 exabytes of NAND flash. To put that in perspective, that’s 6.5 million terabytes of flash storage gone. That number could also be even higher, as it’s only taking into account the loss on Western Digital’s part, and not its partner’s, Kioxia. This is a huge blow to the SSD market and will likely cause an increase in price of NAND memory.

Western Digital’s Yokkaichi and KitaKami manufacturing facilities were affected. The company is now working with its partner Kioxia to “restore the facilities to normal operational status as quickly as possible.” It’s an unfortunate turn of events and this has happened just as SSD prices were beginning to fall. PC hardware just can’t catch a break as prices keep getting higher, and stock gets lower.

It’s important to note that this is a really significant loss for SSD memory. Together, both Western Digital and Kioxia make up around 30% of the market for NAND flash memory. The loss of approximately 6.5 million terabytes, or more, is a big deal that will likely begin to start making waves soon. As you can imagine, this will be due to the principles of supply and demand on the supplier and distributor levels, as well as potential efforts by these companies to recoup some of the losses with subsequently higher prices.

The pricing of NAND SSDs is almost certainly going to rise as the sudden shortage of drives becomes more apparent. Trendforce, a market research company, has said that there could be a 10% price increase across the market. Given that NAND SSDs are already