Spot price of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash chips posted a mild growth this week (November 15-19) as industry players found current prices more competitive as compared to triple-level cell (TLC), according to inSpectrum.
Spot price of a 16Gb MLC NAND flash chip grew by 3% to US$3.78 this week. The price of the same architecture 32Gb chip remained flat at around US$5.30. But the price of a 32Gb TLC chip decreased by 3% to US$3.46.
The gain was more price driven than demand driven as demand at channels is still slow across-the-board. Some traders, who are expecting sales to see a mild recovery prior to the upcoming year-end holidays, have resumed their procurement to replenish inventory. Given that the same-density TLC chips are priced higher with poorer market acceptance, traders/brokers have thus shifted to source MLC chips, pushing the price up.
The demand this week was mainly focused on the low-density MLC segment as most believe demand will come from bundled memory cards, inSpectrum observed. Therefore, the price gain from the 16Gb segment was bigger than for 32Gb. Memory card pricing has been pushed up from US$3.30 to US$3.60 accordingly.