Memory prices soared in the past two years, people feel unforgettable, but in the fourth quarter of 2017, memory prices began to stabilize and declined, DRAM memory chip industry prices fell 5%.
Do not look at 5% of this figure is not large, but enough to make the entire memory and investment industry panicked, especially in the profitability of 2018 worried.
According to the latest forecast, 2018 DRAM memory industry growth rate will cut to 30% - True, a 30% increase does not satisfy investors, they want 60%.
To know that in 2017, taking advantage of the big rise in the imbalance between supply and demand, the entire DRAM memory industry rose like a rocket, a year more than 70 billion US dollars!
This concern is also immediately shown in the stock price, January 6 seems to be a turning point. Among the two giants, shares of Samsung Electronics plunged 7.5% in a week and SK hynix also shed 6.2%.
Of course, there is a strong demand for DRAM memory, especially for smartphones, which has seen a 38% increase in handset memory capacity (an 84% increase in flash memory capacity) compared to the second quarter of 2016. DRAM memory industry It is impossible to collapse. By 2018, the overall situation is still relatively stable with only changes in the growth rate.
Analysts estimate, The operating profit of Samsung's chip unit in 2016 could reach 47%, which is encouraging compared with 26.5% of the previous year, and will reach 55.5% in 2018.
Separately, more than 50% of Samsung's memory chip revenue in 2017 came from the mainland China market.
The DRAM industry is also aggressively expanding capacity with a total investment of 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, hence By 2019, DRAM memory chip prices are expected to decline by up to 18%.
