NAND flash contract prices have continued to decline in early November 2010. Prices for 64Gb and 16Gb MLC products dropped more than 7% and 8Gb MLC products fell 10-14% largely due to the consumer electronics market entering the annual off season, and system customers lowering procurements to manage inventory. The market hopes the price declines can stimulate end-use demand and the drop off to soon moderate.
For the memory module segment, growth of NAND flash has been limited in 2010 with sales contraction of NAND flash memory cards and USB drives, and entry to embedded products still high.
With the price free fall in the second half of 2010, module makers are attempting to keep inventory at lower levels, which further reduced NAND flash shipments.
The steep price drop, however, has helped drive demand from the end-use market, and downstream shipments of NAND flash in October showed signs of growth. The rise in solid-state disks (SSD) should further have positive effects on NAND flash demand from the military, industrial and consumer markets.