Temporary Spring for Global NAND Flash Market
Just about a year, NAND flash memory market begins to decline again. Earlier in July, IHS released report NAND flash memory would fare brighter than ever this year, growing at stalwart 14%.
However, market changes too fast: total NAND bit shipments in the third quarter were projected to rise by 8%, comparing with 9% in 2Q13, according to latest data from IHS. To make matter worse, IHS notes the golden season-4Q will continue the downtrend, expecting to expand by an even lower 5%, down sharply from the 16% rise 4Q12.
Driven by a variety of eastern and western festivals, the fourth quarter usually is full of expectation for manufacturers. However, “The fast-growing season for flash memory appears to be running out of momentum as density growth levels off in many of the products that are leading users of NAND,” said Ryan Chien, storage systems analyst at IHS. “Moreover, few upcoming devices are expected to increase their NAND options, further dampening growth in the short term.”
Below are the factors:
First from largely scale perspective: weak economic situation. Despite slight improvement over last year, this year is still uncertain, which limits consumers’ spending on NAND flash devices, especially high-end smartphone and tablets.
Second: smartphone issue. On one hand, smartphone is squeezing the market of several NAND-heavy device categories like game consoles, PCs, e-readers and USB drives. On the other hand, the slowdown of smartphone innovation is leading to high-end smartphone saturation and the surging of low-end models. “To control cost and maintain affordability, the latter model have to reduce NAND use density”, says IHS.
Furthermore, the rapid transition to lower-cost 7- and 8-inch sizes media limits the usage of NAND Flash memory.
Third: cloud challenges. Cloud provides huge store space and enables provide personalized, cheap and reliable service. “Streaming media options and free cloud storage are diminishing the prospects for increased NAND usage in smartphones,” Ryan Chien said.
He adds”This is true for all three major mobile operating systems-Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone. With less need to store data in local devices, the requirement for greater storage is reduced.”