Because of the oversupply, Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix, which account for 95% of the world's memory pellet production capacity, have reduced memory capital expenditure in the middle of last year and cut memory capital expenditure at the end of the year. By the end of the year, Samsung decided to transform the storage factory into a CMOS factory, and after SK Hynix acquired Intel's flash memory business, it was no longer willing to spend more money to increase production. Coupled with factors such as the increase in demand affected by the epidemic, from the end of 2020, memory has opened a bull market cycle of rising prices.
In the eyes of storage manufacturers, this bull market will continue for a long time. Chen Libai, chairman of Weigang, expects that the problem of tight supply of DRAM upstream suppliers will not be solved in the short term, and the contract price dimension of the third quarter will continue to rise. The financial report released by Micron a few days ago also confirmed the price increase of memory, saying that in the latest quarter, the price of memory increased by 20%, and the price of flash memory also increased by high single digits. Micron expects the supply of DRAM and NAND memory chips to remain tight in 2022, with the DRAM industry expected to grow slightly more than 20% in 2021 and demand for NAND chips growing around 30%.
However, the well-known investment bank Damo took the lead in releasing a bearish report, and they released a latest research report called "Winter Is Coming" on Thursday, analyzing the current and future trends of the memory market. Da Mo believes that now the memory chip industry is facing the later stages of the cycle, memory will soon exceed demand, and memory manufacturers will face a difficult pricing environment next year. This year's Q3 quarter memory prices will continue to rise, Q4 quarter prices will become extremely challenging (previously rumored to be 0 growth, that is, the price will not rise but also do not fall), in 2022 the environment will change greatly, the price will be reversed, began to enter the price reduction cycle.
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