PSA I guess because good SSD deals are usually pretty popular in here.
Article on Tom's Hardware suggests that SSD prices (especially at higher capacities) will increase dramatically over the next few months due to NAND package shortages, with some suggestions prices have already started to rise.
So I guess if you're waiting for a good deal on higher capacity NAND drives, better get them quick.
SSDs are also mass produced so a lot of it would be using NAND that was purchased long ago when it was cheap. As that supply runs out and new NAND needs to be procured the prices may go up.
would be using NAND
I prefer the ones using NOR
if anyone interest, I will just say few things you may or may not know.
It's just my own words, doesn't reflect Lexar's perspective, I use this account simply because I am not allowed to have multiple accounts…
Many info below are just my own knoledge, not very accurate, for the details please do your own reasearch.
Making wafer and Nand in most cases is loss leader business, you hope to keep losing money and drive down prices to get better scale, when you hit critical volume, your competitor will no longer be able to compete and just leaving the market to you. Most SSD makers wants to be the next WD and Seagate in Mechanical hard drives era.
With this goal in mind, and lots of government support…you have those brands fight really hard.
Brands like beloved Samsung, go as far as losing mojarity of the entire Samsung Electronics corperate margin to support the branded memory business.
Unfortunately, not only this fight drags really long (for as long as the SSD exisit), also to everyone's surprise, in 2016, China suddenly joined game with a government funded company called YMTC. YMTC, despite many western ban, especially during Trump government, and many media attack in the west, managed to really drive the storage price down.
Fast forward to last year.
Chinese government already heavily shift the focus to AI and Electronics cars and such.
Then mid of the year, Huawei made their own CPU for their phone. Also electric car booming has been happenning for multiple years.
So the demand on local produced NAND and wafer increased drastically, yet increasing the output still gonna take a long time.
Chinese government decided to put YMTC output towards those focused industries instead of commercial storage products.
Knowing YMTC is somewhat less of a threat for a while. Other major suppliers decided to increase the price to a point where the profit is enough to cover their loss.
They can't play the loss leader game anymore.
Few brands even decided to close the SSD production for good, such as WD, Plextor (30 year old brand from Lite-on, owned by Kioxia now) etc.
With YMTC out tempororily, many other brands, despite not closing down, are also struggling, some shifted supplier and increase cost drammatically, others still selling older stock and didn't figure out what to do next.
Most brands see the upcoming price increases mid last year.
I was told that in mid year, but at the time we have the best costing stock so I wasn't really taking the info seriously.
Then in Q4 I see crazy increase in cost, I start to say price going up on Ozbargain, but people thinking that I want to scare people into buying few more Lexar (depsite I said "buy whichever brand you want now")
Right now in Australia, the retail stock bought from the distributors are mostly from Q4 last year. Due to cashflow reasons, they are shipped late last year or early this year so they arrive at the start of the year (and also hit revenue target last year).
And this bunch of stock are mostly produced between Q2 - Q3 last year, when the price just started to increase.
The most aggressive price increase from factory side will be next month.
Due to price increase, retail movement will slow down, so those heavily increased prices won't show up in the market probably before Q2.
There are still plenty of retails have large volume of stock. So is distie. Many people say "ah, the price is going up why I still see deals everywhere?"
Well…that's why, marketing funds doesn't stop, selling activities doesn't stop, and most current local pricing doesn't reflect what is actually going on from the production side (yet).
No matter what you read on the news, those crazy increase (like whatever 55% - 80% predictions) won't really show up until very late this year.
If by the time new round of nand price fight already started, factory will average out the cost and do some heavy clearence, so you might not even see the "ultimate high price" in retail.
There will be new phones and new gaming consoles going into production and eat up lots of allocations as well.
So this year storage market is going to be tough.
But to be honest, if you invested in storage stocks, this year is probably the first year the market is actually healthy.
Many company will have positive profit making SSD nand and wafers. (not a investment suggestion.)
That said, I think this is also temporary.
Eventually someone, maybe YMTC or other company, will increase production and have capcity to starts a new price fight again.
by then everyone should have more resources, so the price fight will be more fierce than ever.
If you want to buy some SSD, again, doesn't matter if it's Lexar or whatever brands, if there is a deal, buy it.
Otherwise probably prepare to sit for at least half year to a year or even longer before you see the price go flat and then slowly go down.
hope this explain a lot more than I posted in those deals.
And hope you already have the drives you wanted.
Good info, thanks for the insider perspective
They've been saying that for the past 6 months but the SSD deals still show up…