In the past year, most of the voices we heard on PCs and smart phones were rising costs and rising prices, of which SSD and memory prices were the most ferocious gains. However, this gain has recently appeared to have reached its peak. People have noticed that Although the price of memory has rarely changed, the price of SSDs in the past has dropped a lot.
Some consumers hope that the price of SSDs will continue to fall. Although it is not expected to be the same as mechanical hard drives, it is better to drop it to 1 yuan per 1GB. Does this wish come true?
Let's take a look at the recent price trend of SSD.
Samsung SSD price trend:
Kingston SSD Price Trends:
This is Jingdong's current two SSD products with high attention and high sales volume. It has a certain representativeness. It can be seen that both products reached the highest price in mid-2017 and reached the lowest price in April 2018. Kingston 120GB The highest price of SSD products is 530 yuan. Now it's only 259 yuan. The price difference is doubling.
Samsung SSD products are priced at 548 yuan, with a capacity of 250GB, priced at 2.2 yuan per 1GB; Kingston 120GB is priced at 259 yuan, with a capacity of 120GB and a price of 2.15 yuan per 1GB.
So we can see that at present, the SSD price is a historically low value in recent years, but it is far below the price of 1 yuan for 1GB.
So, will SSD continue to lower prices?
Short-term price movements: First fall and then rise
If you want to see the price trend of SSD, you must start from the smart phone industry. At present, smart phones have experienced more than 10 years of growth, and now they have reached the ceiling.
It is reported that global mobile phone shipments in 2017 were 1.49 billion units, which was only a 3% increase from 2016. In China, it was a decrease of 11.6%, and shipments were only 461 million. After entering 2018, smartphones were affected. Due to the weak environmental environment and the impact of off-season sales, shipments continued to decline. In January 2018, smart phone shipments reached 36.282 million units, down from 19% year-on-year.
In the absence of a strong demand side for smartphones, prices will naturally fall. According to the analysis of China's flash memory market, in January 2018, February, the NAND Flash price index fell by more than 12%.
However, after March, the new domestic smartphones will be released continuously, which will have a certain probability to drive up the price of SSDs.
Medium-term price movements: up
In addition to mobile phones, the growing data generated by cars is not to be overlooked.
In recent years, the automotive market has steadily increased its sales, and the daily data generated by its assisted driving equipment is also very alarming. According to statistics, the overall automotive semiconductor market share in 2017 reached 30 billion US dollars, becoming the fastest growing field in the semiconductor market.
Although assisted-driving equipment is now common in high-end vehicles, major car makers have already begun to explore the market after 2018. Toyota’s new car model Zeze has achieved a smart cruise system with low-end car prices. With the market popularity of automatic driving technology, the next one to two years will be the fastest growing year for automotive storage, and the demand for flash memory will also become extremely large. This will have a positive impact on SSD prices.
Long-term price trends: The key also depends on China
At present, the 64-layer 3D NAND of major flash manufacturers has gradually matured. Samsung Electronics has said that 64-layer V NAND technology has a 30% improvement in production efficiency compared with 48-layer V-NAND, Toshiba/Western Digital, Micron, SK Hynix, etc. in 2017 In the first half of the year, it also announced the launch of 64-layer/72-layer 3D NAND, which will enter the mass production phase in the second half of 2017. After 2018, 3D NAND production capacity has increased significantly.
According to the latest report of DRAMeXchange, the production capacity of the 2018 NAND flash on the supply side will increase by 42.9%, while on the demand side, the growth is expected to be 37.7%.
However, the increase in flash memory capacity does not mean that flash manufacturers are willing to cut prices. The biggest obstacle to SSD price reduction is the monopoly of 3D NAND technology. Several manufacturers are observing the dynamics of Chinese manufacturers. If large-scale production of 3D NAND is implemented in China, it can force SSDs to further cut prices.
From the status quo, China's Yangtze River storage has achieved good results.
Currently, the Yangtze River stores 32-layer 3D NAND, which is progressing smoothly. Its product specifications are good, and it will achieve full-load capacity in 2019. This is a very big step for China Semiconductor, which started late.
Yangtze River Storage plans to achieve half-generation technology gap with the world's cutting-edge technology in 2019 and catch up with world-leading technology in 2020. In other words, by 2020, we can use 1GB 1GB or even less than 1GB 1GB SSD.
please wait patiently.
