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Institutions: Comprehensive upward revision of Q1 DRAM and NAND Flash price growth forecasts for all products.
According to BlockBeats' latest memory industry survey, released on July 6th, demand from AI and data centers will continue to exacerbate the global memory supply-demand imbalance in the first quarter of 2026, further increasing manufacturers' bargaining power. Based on this, TrendForce has comprehensively revised upwards its Q1 price growth forecasts for all DRAM and NAND Flash products. It predicts that the overall Conventional DRAM contract price will increase by 90-95% from the 55-60% increase announced in early January, while the NAND Flash contract price will be revised upwards from 33-38% to 55-60%, with further upward revisions not ruled out. Click the original link below to join the Beating · Lark AI news channel for 24/7 monitoring of global AI hot topics and news.
TrendForce: The DRAM market will continue to face severe supply shortages in Q3.
According to BlockBeats, on July 3rd, TrendForce, a high-tech industry research firm, released its latest memory price survey, predicting that the DRAM market will continue to face a severe and widespread supply shortage in the third quarter of 2026. Despite this, slowing consumer application demand and a high base effect will slightly moderate the rate of increase, with DRAM contract prices expected to rise by +13% to 18% quarter-over-quarter. For NAND Flash, TrendForce believes that AI inference demand and large-scale data center construction will continue to drive most of the demand. However, with contract prices already at historical highs and slowing consumer market demand, customers' ability to absorb further price increases has reached its limit. Therefore, TrendForce predicts that NAND Flash contract prices will rise by +10% to 15% quarter-over-quarter, a significantly smaller increase than in previous quarters.
TrendForce: DRAM shortages spread to DDR2; older memory prices expected to continue rising in Q3.
According to a report by Mars Finance on June 23, TrendForce, a high-tech industry research firm, stated in a study released on June 22 that the continued tightening of mature process DRAM supply is forcing consumer DRAM buyers to turn to earlier-generation memory products to secure more supply quotas. This change is driving up demand for traditional DRAM such as DDR2 and DDR3, and continuing the upward trend in related product prices. The firm predicts that DDR2 contract prices will rise by approximately 55% to 60% in the second quarter of 2026, and will further increase by 35% to 40% in the third quarter. This means that after a strong increase in the first quarter, the pressure on DDR2 prices has not eased, but has instead continued to intensify due to the widening supply-demand gap. The core reason on the supply side comes from the reallocation of advanced process capacity. TrendForce points out that the three major DRAM manufacturers are still prioritizing capacity for HBM and server DRAM to meet the demand brought about by AI infrastructure construction. Correspondingly, the wafer allocation for DDR4 and other mature process products has been compressed, forcing consumer DRAM customers to turn to Taiwanese suppliers for support. With limited supply, Taiwanese DRAM manufacturers such as Nanya Technology and Winbond Electronics have gained stronger bargaining power. TrendForce indicates that as demand significantly exceeds the bit capacity that Taiwanese manufacturers can provide, suppliers are strategically reducing production of low-margin products and shifting capacity to higher-value products to improve their profit structure. Changes are also occurring on the demand side. With shortages of consumer-grade DRAM and rising contract prices, some OEMs and ODMs have begun to downgrade memory specifications to control overall system costs. Some designs originally using DDR4 have been converted to DDR3, and some DDR3 products have been further converted to DDR2. Customers are attempting to secure relatively stable supply by offering lower capacity configurations or older generation products. This has caused the DRAM shortage pressure to propagate down the technology generation. The supply shortage, which was originally concentrated in HBM, server DRAM, and DDR4, has begun to spread to traditional products such as DDR3 and DDR2, highlighting the crowding-out effect of AI demand on the entire memory supply chain. TrendForce states that major suppliers of DDR2 include Winbond Electronics and Crystal Semiconductor. However, Winbond is gradually reducing DDR2 production and shifting related capacity to products with relatively higher gross margins, such as DDR3, DDR4, and LPDDR4, which will further exacerbate the DDR2 supply shortage. In contrast, ChipMOS plans to expand DDR2 production as much as possible within Powerchip Semiconductor's existing wafer quota, concentrating resources to improve the profitability of this product line and partially filling the supply gap left by Winbond's withdrawal from DDR2. This round of price increases shows that the memory demand brought about by AI is no longer only affecting high-end HBM and server DRAM. As advanced production capacity is redirected, mature processes and older memory products are also beginning to become pressure points for supply and demand imbalances. For consumer electronics, industrial control, and some long-lifecycle equipment that still rely on DDR2 and DDR3, cost pressures may continue to rise in the second half of the year.
Citrini: AMD and Apple are simultaneously pushing forward with flash memory solutions to replace DRAM in AI products.
According to Mars Finance, on June 16th, Citrini Research, the organization behind the "AI Doomsday Report," published an article stating that AMD and Apple are simultaneously advancing solutions to partially replace DRAM with flash memory in their AI products. AMD acquired MEXT to optimize flash memory, bringing its performance close to DRAM, thereby reducing memory costs in AI data centers; Apple, on the other hand, achieves similar optimizations on the device side through its "LLM in a flash" technology. Citrini's latest research report highlights the high memory demands of key-value caching in AI inference, and the "memory tax" pressure from HBM (Hardware Bus) already accounting for 25% of DRAM capacity. Flash memory, costing only 1/55th that of DRAM, can provide a capacity and bandwidth alternative for edge AI through controller optimization, NAND stacking, and cell mode adjustments. This report provides theoretical support for the recent surge in memory stocks, particularly SanDisk.
Storage stocks overcorrected? Institutions clarify Nvidia's memory "downgrade" controversy: HBM demand unaffected.
According to BlockBeats, on June 6th, the global storage sector experienced a collective pullback following a SemiAnalysis report on memory configuration adjustments for NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin NVL72 server platform. On June 5th, SK Hynix plunged 9.92%, and the A-share memory index fell by approximately 4%, with stocks such as Biwin Storage, Longsys, Montage Technology, and GigaDevice among the biggest losers. The previous trading day, Micron Technology closed down 7.74%. The report stated that NVIDIA plans to reduce the SOCAMM system memory capacity paired with Vera CPUs from 192GB to 96GB, which is expected to reduce the cost per rack from $7.6 million to $6.8 million, a saving of approximately 10%. The market initially worried about weakening demand for AI server storage. However, several institutions subsequently pointed out that this adjustment only involves the pluggable SOCAMM memory modules on the CPU side, representing a temporary flexible configuration optimization rather than a permanent hardware downgrade. The demand for HBM high-bandwidth memory related to GPU core computing power remains unaffected. Previously, Morgan Stanley estimated that Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin (VR200) rack price would be approximately $7.8 million, with memory-related material costs increasing by over 435% compared to the previous generation. Industry insiders also stated that the bottleneck in AI hardware is gradually shifting from computing power to memory and interconnectivity. This year, the global storage sector has continued to strengthen, with the market gradually shifting its valuation logic for the storage industry from traditional cyclical stocks to "AI infrastructure assets." However, with rapidly rising valuations and increased trading congestion, any news involving changes in storage demand could trigger market volatility. Despite a short-term correction, many companies in the industry chain remain optimistic about the continued industry boom. Biwin Storage stated that the supply-demand gap driven by AI computing power demand is unlikely to ease in the short term, and product prices still have room to rise; some manufacturers expect the supply shortage to continue until 2027. CFM flash memory market data shows that the global DRAM and NAND Flash market size reached $137.14 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a record high for a single quarter.
TrendForce: Raises Q3 and Q4 DRAM contract price forecasts, benefiting DRAM manufacturers such as Micron.
According to Mars Finance, on June 30th, TrendForce, a high-tech industry research firm, raised its Q3 2026 PC DRAM contract price growth forecast from 8-13% to 15-20%, and its Q4 forecast from 0-5% to 3-8%. Furthermore, server DRAM contract prices are expected to rise 13-18% quarter-on-quarter in Q3, primarily driven by strong server demand and overall supply tightness. Analysts point out that this upward price forecast is beneficial to DRAM manufacturers such as Micron, reflecting the continued impact of the supply-demand imbalance in the memory market on industry revenue.