Thursday, July 27th 2023
Samsung Will Reportedly Cut DRAM and NAND Production Further After US$7 Billion Loss
Earlier today, Samsung released its Q2 results, which were a mixed bag with many business units underperforming. However, none were doing as poorly as Samsung's memory business which made a loss of 4.36 trillion Won or around US$3.4 billion. Although not mentioned in the financial report, Reuters are reporting that Samsung is looking to cut production of NAND and DRAM further, as the publication is pointing out that Samsung's chipset business as a whole lost a staggering 8.9 trillion Won or US$7 billion. That said, the loss wasn't quite as bad as in the first quarter of the year and Samsung is expected to cut the loss in half for Q3.
In a statement to Reuters, Samsung said "Production cuts across the industry are likely to continue in the second half, and demand is expected to gradually recover as clients continue to destock their (chip) inventory." This suggests that the expected recovery isn't going to happen as soon as the DRAM and NAND manufacturers expected, as there simply isn't enough demand for either product. SK Hynix has already announced that it's cutting production a further five to 10 percent for NAND, but the company doesn't appear to have had quite as big losses as Samsung. For the time being, this is good news for consumers, as RAM and SSD pricing is about as low as it has ever been. However, with production cuts from all the three major manufacturers of DRAM and NAND, prices will most likely start going up soon, especially as Samsung is said to have depleted most of its inventories.
Source:
Reuters
In a statement to Reuters, Samsung said "Production cuts across the industry are likely to continue in the second half, and demand is expected to gradually recover as clients continue to destock their (chip) inventory." This suggests that the expected recovery isn't going to happen as soon as the DRAM and NAND manufacturers expected, as there simply isn't enough demand for either product. SK Hynix has already announced that it's cutting production a further five to 10 percent for NAND, but the company doesn't appear to have had quite as big losses as Samsung. For the time being, this is good news for consumers, as RAM and SSD pricing is about as low as it has ever been. However, with production cuts from all the three major manufacturers of DRAM and NAND, prices will most likely start going up soon, especially as Samsung is said to have depleted most of its inventories.
17 Comments on Samsung Will Reportedly Cut DRAM and NAND Production Further After US$7 Billion Loss
No, it's clearly not "good news for consumers" - it's verified by falling sales and falling revenue. Most of the consumers already have what the companies are offering. If they're offering the same things at half the price, it only shows most of the people they have vastly overpaid these products in recent years. Rising prices after that won't help, I'm sure.
Obviously I regret getting an SSD I bought last year, as it's less than half the price now, but it's not as if anyone could've prediced that prices were going to go down this much.
Turns out I got the SATA drive in 2021 and it hasn't dropped as much in price, only about a third.
Likewise with the Kingston, I didn't really need it, but I was moving country and they were 40 percent more expensive in Sweden, but alas...
That said, it seems like we're close to rock bottom now, with very good 2 TB drives going for around $100-120 and 1 TB drives going for $50-60.
Unless there's zero demand for the next year, I don't see prices dropping all that much further, as it's not sustainable long term.
Then again, with chinese competition in both SSD controllers and NAND, who knows.
Most people buy their phones from stores as providers tie those discounts with expensive extra data packages.
I don't even need half the speed these SSDs offer, I just want to replace those damn HDDs.
I've already stocked up on all the m.2's and ram sticks that I will need for my future upgrades and client builds over the next 6-12 months or so.... yea it was an investment, but with my biz growing like it is, I feel good about it :)
Still bummed that 4TB drives haven't followed 2TB price drops equally.
edit - maybe samsung would sell more drives if their prices were in line with others. No point getting a 980 pro if some corsair and KC3000, and other equivalents 30% cheaper.
But we had 4 TB SSDs since ages ago, and in 2020 we already had our first low budget drive, Samsung SSD 870 QVO 4TB. Together with 8TB drive. It's mind boggling that new models of SSDs don't even offer the 4TB, and 8TB option is still limited (in consumer market) to that ancient slow Samsung SATA drive.
I think most people just dont need the storage. We live in the cloud world now, everyone uploads everything instead of saving it locally these days. Those of us that horde digital data are fewer then ever.