Storage is out of stock, prices are constantly rising

The global coding memory (NOR Flash) leader Wanghong (2337) and Taiwan's largest niche memory designer Jinhaoke yesterday (12) synchronously sang the market situation. Wanghong general seat Lu Zhiyuan predicted that the NOR chip market situation "no dark clouds", the continuous supply of this season is in short supply, the price continues to rise, is at least six consecutive seasons of price increases, the longest rise in history; Zhang Mingjian, general manager of Jinghaoke, believes that the market situation of niche memory will fall one season in advance in this quarter, and will be out of stock and price increases from next quarter.

NOR chips and niche memory are the two most important lifelines of Taiwan's memory industry at this stage, apple, Tesla and other large manufacturers must find Taiwan factories to supply. Wanghong accounts for nearly 30% of the global NOR chip market, dominating the top, followed by Winbond, Winbond product line and across NOR and niche memory, with the positive development of the two major product market conditions, will also benefit, symbolizing the Taiwan memory industry Golden Tiger Year will be "tiger tiger life style".

Photo/ Courtesy of Economic Daily

Previously, foreign investors generally expected that the memory market will not heat up significantly after the second quarter, and even the NOR chip, which has been rising in price for more than a year, is also facing a retracement. According to industry sources, Huahong, the second largest wafer foundry in the mainland, jumped power, the local NOR chip leader Gigabit innovation output was blocked, and the benefits of Samsung's transfer production line continued, so that the actual market development of memory was far better than expected.

Lu Zhiyuan and Zhang Mingjian expressed their views on the market situation after attending the inauguration ceremony of the special course of memory majors in the College of Engineering of Chang Gung University yesterday. Lu Zhiyuan stressed that the industry did not see dark clouds, NOR market conditions remained stable, mainly because the logic IC situation is good, the mainland wafer foundry does not want to oem production NOR chips, resulting in a relative reduction in the supply of continental related memory capacity, which helps the price trend.

Lu Zhiyuan stressed that high-density NOR chips such as automotive, AI, and 5G continue to be out of stock, and prices will continue to rise this season. Industry insiders pointed out that in the past, NOR chip quotations were "only falling and not rising", but in the second half of 2020, the market conditions were strong, the price rose all the way, as of last year, there have been five consecutive seasons of price increases, and this quarter continues to rise, which will be the sixth consecutive season of price increases, the longest rise in history.

Jinhaoke originally expected that under the correction of customer demand, the market situation will not be expected to warm up until the second quarter, but Zhang Mingjian pointed out yesterday that it seems that the operation will fall to the bottom in advance, the customer correction period will end in the first quarter, and customers believe that the price of niche DRAM in the second quarter may be bullish, but it has not yet been officially decided, and throughout the year, the third quarter will be the best season of Jinhaoke in the traditional electronics industry.

Zhang Mingjian analysis, Samsung has issued a notice to transfer the existing niche memory capacity to the production of CMOS image sensors, but the demand for niche memory such as DDR3 is still quite large, after Samsung does not do, the supply will immediately shrink a lot, although mainland manufacturers have joined the niche market below DDR3, but the current yield is not high, the compatibility is not good, and it will take a while to catch up with the Taiwan factory.

In terms of wafer costs, Zhang Mingjian explained that the company has signed contracts with suppliers, the cost reached a high point in the fourth quarter of last year, and the inventory will be slightly reduced in the first quarter of this year, and the inventory will also be reflected on a rolling basis; it is reported that Jinghaoke has two-thirds of the product contract price, and the rest of the price is adjusted month by month.