Storage sector brewing a new round of price hikes

November 11 - Recently, several storage industry insiders have revealed that some leading companies have verbally informed channel distributors of their intention to raise prices for enterprise-grade NAND flash chips. Although official price increase letters have not yet been issued, prices on the channel side have already begun to move. Multiple agents have confirmed these price hike signals. An SK Hynix agent stated, "Prices are rising every day." He observed that second-hand disk recycling prices have been continuously climbing, driving overall quotations upward; the price adjustment path involves provincial distributors adjusting prices weekly, with agent product prices then passed down, "and we follow suit." However, a Samsung agent noted that this round of price increases is not a broad hike across all categories: the increases are mainly concentrated in DRAM contract segments and enterprise SSD original manufacturer/channel segments, rather than a comprehensive rise in consumer-grade NAND. "The bulk is still driven by computing power centers; demand feedback from the grassroots level is actually moderate."

Since the price increases are initially concentrated in DRAM contract segments and enterprise SSD links, as these prices propagate outward from original manufacturers, they first reach not end consumers but the manufacturing enterprises and module manufacturers caught in the middle. These manufacturers are the first recipients of the original manufacturers' price hikes, and given their different positions in the industry chain, their experiences and pressures vary significantly. (Blue Whale News)