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In 2017, more than 400 billion US dollars of semiconductor output value, flash memory, memory and other storage chips accounted for nearly one-third of the total output value of 130 billion US dollars, mainly because of flash memory, memory chips in the past two years, price increases, resulting in The revenue of the memory chip market has increased by as much as 60%.
After entering 2018, NAND prices have turned from ups and downs, and now have fallen by 50% compared to last year's peak price. Memory chips continue to rise 20% this year, but as Chinese companies enter the memory market and mass production, the memory market It will be affected in the second half of next year.
In recent days, South Korea's SK Hynix, Samsung's share price plummeted, SK Hynix shares plunged 7% on Monday, mainly because of the market's decline in NAND flash memory, that the price will continue to decline, which will affect the company's camp Revenue. Reuters today published an article on the current NAND and DRAM market conditions and changes.
First, look at the NAND market. As the industry shifts from 2D NAND flash to 3D NAND flash, this year's capacity growth exceeds demand growth due to lower production costs, forcing SMEs to actively cut prices to maintain market share.
Compared with the peak price in 2017, NAND flash memory prices have fallen by half, and will further decline, which led to SK Hynix and other companies plunging 7% on Monday.
Alan Chen, director of market research firm DRAMeXchange, said: 'The profit margin of the manufacturer is deteriorating, mainly because the average selling price declines much faster than the cost reduction.'
According to his prediction, NAND prices will fall further during the rest of the year.
Nomura Securities predicts that this year's flash memory chip supply will grow 40% to 50%, but global smartphone sales slowed, which will lead to a 20% drop in NAND prices.
In terms of memory, memory prices have risen by 20% this year due to market impacts such as servers, gaming PCs and cryptocurrencies, but companies such as Samsung have been investigated by Chinese antitrust agencies and China is working hard to build local memory production to reduce foreign suppliers. The dependence, which makes the memory market lose the incentive to raise prices.
According to analysts, Beijing has already regarded the semiconductor industry as the focus of the 'Made in China 2025 Strategy'. There are Changjiang storage, Hefei Changxin and Fujian Jinhua are preparing to mass produce storage chips.
Song Myung-sup, an analyst at HI Investment& Securities, said that 'the production scale of Chinese companies will be small in the first half of 2019, but as their yields get better, production will increase, which will affect the semiconductor market in the second half of next year. '
According to Andrew Norwood, principal analyst at Gartner, China's entry into the memory market may be one of the reasons why Samsung is actively expanding its production capacity. He predicted that there will be a 'significant reduction in 'overseas manufacturers' income' in 2020 and 2021.
However, other analysts also expressed optimism, BNP Paribas analyst Peter Yu said that the momentum of profit growth may disappear, but they believe that in 2019 can maintain a working profit level of 90 billion US dollars, and will not seriously collapse.
'The rich and stable profit is the new standard in the memory industry.'
Samsung expects to achieve a profit of 12.5 trillion won ($11 billion) in chip sales in the quarter ending in June, up 50% year-on-year. SK hynix also reported that its profits will increase by 74% to 5.4. Trillion won.
SK hynix will release its financial report on the 26th of this month. The release date of Samsung's financial report is July 31, and Toshiba will release its earnings on August 8.
