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AI demand is not simply affecting pricing for RAM. The CEO of Phison, a serious supplier of controllers for SSD drives, advised buyers final week to brace for value will increase for NAND flash, which is utilized in PC storage.
“Just lately all of the NAND firms begin to enhance their promoting value nearly as much as 50, 75%,” CEO Khein Seng Pua stated in an earnings name. “So the demand is turned to very robust in This autumn.”
“We imagine the cloud AI, the sting AI, goes to want extra storage, and arduous drive displacement is going on. So NAND will likely be provide tight for a lot of, a few years,” he added.
Later within the name, Pua attributed the surge to the AI sector and “very robust” demand for PCs and cellular units. “Simply immediately the AI methods want extra storage for AI inference,” he famous.
Pua stated it is arduous to foretell NAND pricing for subsequent yr. However he does not count on enterprise cloud service suppliers to cut back their demand for storage, citing the necessity to sustain with the AI demand. “They wish to have extra income, extra revenue. They should have extra storage,” he stated. In consequence, he’s urging NAND suppliers to chorus from elevating pricing too excessive.
(Photograph by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto by way of Getty Pictures)
“We hope, we want, we ask, we request if the NAND firm is having fun with good gross margin, 50, 60%. Good. Don’t attempt to go to 80%. This positively will kill a number of business,” he stated.
Pua additionally laid out a situation the place if the pricing for flash reminiscence doubles, then {hardware} producers within the smartphone and PC business may lower the storage capability of their merchandise by as a lot as 50%. “For instance, a smartphone utilizing 256GB, value go 2x, they lower right down to 128GB. Then the demand immediately drop, then the worth happening,” he stated.
Phison’s CEO made the remark after flash reminiscence supplier SanDisk’s CEO additionally reported that “demand for our NAND merchandise continued to outpace our provide, a dynamic we count on to persist via the tip of calendar yr 2026 and past.”
The excellent news is that pricing for client SSDs appears to have solely barely elevated in current weeks. For instance, costs for Samsung’s NVMe storage appears to have gone up by round $10, in keeping with PCPartPicker.com
(Credit score: PCPartPicker.com)
Nonetheless, PC builders ought to think about shopping for storage now, or throughout Black Friday gross sales. AI demand has additionally brought about pricing for DDR5 and DDR4 RAM to skyrocket in current months.
In the meantime, Phison’s CEO says the corporate has already secured NAND reminiscence items from its suppliers for subsequent yr, however isn’t certain if it’ll be sufficient.
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About Our Professional
Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
Expertise
I have been a journalist for over 15 years. I acquired my begin as a faculties and cities reporter in Kansas Metropolis and joined PCMag in 2017, the place I cowl satellite tv for pc web companies, cybersecurity, PC {hardware}, and extra. I am at the moment based mostly in San Francisco, however beforehand spent over 5 years in China, masking the nation’s know-how sector.
Since 2020, I’ve lined the launch and explosive progress of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc web service, writing 600+ tales on availability and have launches, but additionally the regulatory battles over the growth of satellite tv for pc constellations, fights with rival suppliers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the trouble to increase into satellite-based cellular service. I’ve combed via FCC filings for the newest information and pushed to distant corners of California to check Starlink’s mobile service.
I additionally cowl cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this yr, the FTC pressured Avast to pay customers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and promoting their private data to third-party shoppers, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I additionally cowl the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in entrance of a Finest Purchase to get an RTX 3000. I am now following how President Trump’s tariffs will have an effect on the business. I am at all times desirous to be taught extra, so please soar within the feedback with suggestions and ship me suggestions.
