Analyst: NAND flash pricing may crash to 8 cents per GB in 2019

Over at last week's Flash Memory summit, Objective Analysis analyst Jim Handy predicted that the flash memory market is about to see a big drop in pricing. As the pendulum swings from undersupply to oversupply, Handy expects we'll see pricing collapse to close to the production cost of 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory. His prediction calls for $0.08/GB flash in 2019, which would be the biggest price correction in the history of semiconductors.

Wells Fargo senior analyst Aaron Rakers estimates current NAND flash pricing stands at about $0.30/GB. Do note that this pricing exclusively deals with the NAND flash memory, solid state disks also include other components. Still, it would be really exciting to finally be able to buy large-capacity SSDs at very attractive prices.

Wells Fargo senior analyst Aaron Rakers, using IDC and DRAMeXchange data, estimated total NAND flash pricing stands today at ~$0.30/GB. Rakers noted Objective Analysis expects a 45 per cent per annum growth in NAND flash capacity shipped.

Some 70 per cent of total industry flash is 3D NAND, with the remainder the older 2D or planar NAND. Handy believed this manufacturing capacity could be migrated to making DRAM instead – and warned this could result in DRAM capacity over-supply in the future.

Via: The Register