Source: Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily
① According to reports, Micron has proposed an increase in Q2 product quotes to most customers, an increase of more than 20%. Price negotiations are still ongoing. ② Micron's DRAM production in Taiwan accounts for about 60% of the company's overall DRAM production capacity. On the day of the April 3 earthquake, it had already stopped DRAM quotes, and Samsung, SK Hynix, and module manufacturers followed suit and stopped quoting. ③ Over the past week, news of price increases and production expansion has been reported many times in the memory chip industry.
Demand for cloud servers and enterprise storage rebounded strongly, compounded by the recent earthquake in Taiwan, which affected the industry's production capacity supply, and the already tight supply of the memory chip industry. The Q2 increase may expand further.
According to the Taiwan Electronic Times, citing relevant market sources, the leading memory chip company$Micron Technology (MU.US)$Most customers have been offered to increase their offers for Q2 products, an increase of more than 20%. Price negotiations are still ongoing.
Micron's DRAM production in Taiwan accounts for about 60% of the company's overall DRAM production capacity. After the earthquake occurred on April 3, it has responded that it has confirmed that all local employees are safe. Micron's impact on local production operations and supply chain is still being assessed, and will continue to communicate with customers about the supply situation.
On the same night, TrendForce released a research report stating that Micron had taken the lead in stopping DRAM quotes and restarted negotiations on the 2024 Q2 contract price after the disaster loss assessment. Samsung and SK Hynix also followed suit and stopped the offer. Although the two major suppliers do not produce DRAM in Taiwan, they also want to wait and see the market before moving. The move prompted the storage module manufacturer to follow up and stop the quotation on the same day.
Another report from TrendForce on April 4 shows that in terms of DRAM, the extent of the impact on production, operation and supply chain at the Mikuang Linkou plant is still being assessed. Its Linkou factory and Taichung plant are important DRAM production bases. The internal system has merged the two factories into one. Currently, the latest 1beta nm process has been released, and HBM will be produced in Taiwan in the future. It will still take a few days to fully resume operation. Most of the rest of the factories have resumed work one after another after the shutdown inspection.
▌News of price increases and production expansion in the memory chip industry is frequent
In fact, over the past week, news of price increases and production expansion has been reported many times in the memory chip industry.
In terms of DRAM, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will increase investment in DRAM wafers in the second quarter of this year to effectively end production cuts. Samsung Electronics has raised the average monthly DRAM wafer input for the second quarter of this year to 600,000, an increase of 13% over the previous month; it is expected to increase DRAM wafer input to 660,000 pieces in the second half of the year, and DRAM production will return to the level before the reduction. SK Hynix will increase the average monthly DRAM wafer input from 390,000 in the first quarter to 410,000 in the second quarter; the company's DRAM wafer investment is expected to increase to 450,000 in the second half of the year.
In terms of NAND Flash, enterprise-grade SSDs are also out of stock and prices have increased.
Samsung plans to raise the price of enterprise-grade SSDs by 20%-25% in the second quarter of this year. The original plan was to increase the price by about 15%, but due to “surging beyond expectations,” the storage giant decided to raise the increase. Furthermore, Samsung plans to expand production of enterprise-grade SSDs.
Behind this, data centers of top US tech companies are shifting from HDDs to enterprise-grade SSDs because HDDs are too slow and unable to operate. “Server companies order SSDs to expand storage capacity. Recently, related orders have increased dramatically, and some products are even in short supply.” People in the semiconductor industry said so.
editor/tolk