The prices of most finished products in the memory spot market continue to rise, and controlling supply to increase prices remains the main theme!

Benefiting from the significantly improved price environment of the NAND and DRAM product lines in the third quarter, and in response to the strong new demand for server NAND and DRAM, the sales of high - value - added products such as server DDR5, LPDDR5X, HBM3E, and eSSD have been expanded. This has driven Samsung, SK Hynix, etc. to achieve record - high business revenues in Q3, significantly improving the overall profitability. Financial report data shows that the current inventory has been rapidly consumed, and memory manufacturers will further increase the share of high - profit products applied to the server market. The overall supply growth of products including DRAM and NAND is limited.

In addition, judging from the latest temporary contract quotations released by some memory manufacturers recently, memory manufacturers have shown an attitude of strongly increasing prices. The prices of DRAM and NAND products covering application markets such as servers, mobile phones, and PCs have increased by a minimum of 20%, and the increase in some quotations has even exceeded 40%. Although it will take some time for the contract prices of memory manufacturers to be implemented, given that a large number of additional orders for DRAM and NAND are continuously released in the server market, and the market has a higher tolerance for prices, the production capacity at the supply end is shifting more towards the server market. Mobile and PC terminal customers are in a relatively passive position in terms of obtaining sufficient supply and negotiating prices.

The core driving force behind this round of price increases comes from the explosion of server memory demand. Memory manufacturers have structurally shifted their production capacity to the server market, affecting the supply in the mobile, PC, and spot markets. The strong price increase of consumer - grade NAND and DRAM has gone beyond demand factors. In the coming period, the market situation of tight supply and rising prices of DRAM and NAND in the spot market may become the norm.

In terms of upstream resources, the prices of 1Tb QLC, 1Tb TLC, 512Gb TLC, and 256Gb TLC have been adjusted to $7.00/$7.50/$5.20/$4.50 respectively; the prices of DDR4 16Gb 3200/16Gb eTT/8Gb 3200/8Gb eTT/4Gb eTT have been adjusted to $20.00/$6.50/$8.00/$3.40/$1.35 respectively; the prices of DDR5 24Gb Major/16Gb Major/16Gb eTT have been adjusted to $18.00/$12.00/$7.00 respectively.

In recent times, the prices of DRAM and NAND resources at the channel trading end have been rising frequently, and the spot circulation volume at the channel end is scarce. Recently, there have still been many inquiries from channel customers, but channel suppliers generally have a low willingness to accept orders. In the short term, only for the demands provided by individual core customers, an appropriate amount of supply is given based on a certain price increase.

In recent times, the sharp increase in channel NAND resources has indirectly triggered concerns among PC customers about supply continuity and rising storage costs. At present, some industry suppliers have basically achieved their annual targets. Without significant performance pressure, industry suppliers have more confidence in raising prices and continue to test the tolerance of PC customers for high - priced industry SSDs. Regarding DRAM, due to the extremely sharp reduction in the supply of DDR4 particles for more than half a year, most PC terminals have gradually upgraded to the DDR5 platform. For core major customers who still have long - tail demand for DDR4, under severe supply restrictions, storage suppliers generally maintain a small amount of DDR4 memory module supply with old inventory and continue to push up product quotations.

As of now, although the final pricing at the supply end has not been finalized, the tender prices of some LPDDR resources have increased by more than $0.50, to a certain extent, establishing a high expectation for upstream resource price increases in the market. Coupled with the low supply satisfaction rate of LPDDR, memory suppliers are determined to raise the price of LPDDR4X. Regarding NAND, memory suppliers prioritize meeting the demands of Tier1 customers, and the price increase is relatively mild compared to the mass market. In the price - increasing market, mass customers need to pay a higher price to obtain limited supply support.