You know SSDs are super cheap at the moment, right? These are the good times, but as production gets cut chip prices will rise
The golden age of cheap memory and SSDs has been good to us all, but like all good things, it was never destined to last. At least not according to Techspot, which has reported that, due to forthcoming production cuts, the industry is likely to see an upswing in consumer prices towards the end of this year.
A drop in consumer demand during the pandemic (remember that?) led to a substantial oversupply of NAND and DRAM—the basic building blocks of SSDs and system memory— which in turn caused a significant drop in pricing that’s continued over the past few years.
In fact, prices on average have dropped by 30% since the start of 2023 alone. However, the price drop began to sputter and stall over summer, leading analysts to predict a recovery of the market and higher component pricing to come. According to Taiwan’s United Daily, several suppliers have already shown positive financial results recently with more expected to follow, suggesting the beginnings of a resurgence in the market, and that likely indicates price rises will follow.
To make matters worse, Samsung has decided to halve its production during September, with lower manufacturing levels predicted to last for at least the rest of this year. While this is no guarantee that pricing of NAND and DRAM based components will substantially rise, it’s a pretty good indicator that things are about to change in this sector. That's likely to make your next SSD or DRAM purchase a little more expensive than you may have been hoping should you hang around too long.
Relatively low consumer demand for the latest and greatest generation of SSDs and DRAM may soften the blow slightly, but what effect this has on the market as a whole remains to be seen.
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