Wednesday, March 5th 2025
Weak Consumer Electronics Demand Drives 4Q24 NAND Flash Revenue Down 6.2% QoQ, Says TrendForce
TrendForce's latest research reveals that the NAND Flash market faced downward pressure in 4Q24 as PC and smartphone manufacturers continued inventory clearance efforts, leading to significant supply chain adjustments. Consequently, NAND Flash prices reversed downward, with ASP dropping 4% QoQ, while overall bit shipments declined by 2%. Total industry revenue fell 6.2% QoQ to US$16.52 billion.
Looking ahead to 1Q25, the traditional slow season effect remains unavoidable despite suppliers actively reducing production. Server and other key end-market inventory restocking has slowed, and with both order volumes and contract prices declining sharply. NAND Flash industry revenue is expected to drop by up to 20% QoQ. However, as production cuts take effect and prices stabilize, the NAND Flash market is expected to recover in the second half of 2025.
Samsung retained its top position but faced a 9.7% QoQ revenue decline to $5.6 billion, impacted by weak demand for consumer electronics. Moving forward, Samsung aims to focus on enterprise SSD development and adjust production plans to respond to market shifts.
SK Group (including SK hynix and Solidigm) was affected by order cuts across the market, preventing it from meeting its previously set shipment growth targets. Q4 revenue fell 6.6% QoQ to $3.39 billion, securing second place. SK plans to dynamically adjust capacity in response to fluctuations in demand, positioning itself as a comprehensive AI ecosystem memory supplier through HBM, DRAM, and enterprise SSD offerings.
Kioxia, ranked third, saw enterprise SSD shipments offset weak smartphone and PC demand, limiting its Q4 revenue decline to just 0.2% QoQ, reaching $2.66 billion. The company is increasing NAND Flash layer count and significantly improving data transfer speeds, leveraging existing equipment for technological upgrades.
Micron, despite strong enterprise SSD shipments, was unable to counterbalance weak consumer demand, with Q4 NAND Flash revenue down 9.3% QoQ to $2.28 billion, placing it fourth. In 2025, Micron will cut capital expenditures on NAND Flash, slow down technology upgrades, and focus on 60 TB + SSD demand to improve profitability.
Western Digital/SanDisk, ranked fifth, saw consumer NAND product shipments exceed expectations, leading to a QoQ increase in total bit shipments. Despite falling prices, NAND Flash revenue remained flat at $1.88 billion. As NVIDIA's Project Digits and the AI PC trend gain traction, SanDisk, a key PC SSD supplier, is expected to see steady revenue growth starting in 2Q25.
Looking ahead to 1Q25, the traditional slow season effect remains unavoidable despite suppliers actively reducing production. Server and other key end-market inventory restocking has slowed, and with both order volumes and contract prices declining sharply. NAND Flash industry revenue is expected to drop by up to 20% QoQ. However, as production cuts take effect and prices stabilize, the NAND Flash market is expected to recover in the second half of 2025.
SK Group (including SK hynix and Solidigm) was affected by order cuts across the market, preventing it from meeting its previously set shipment growth targets. Q4 revenue fell 6.6% QoQ to $3.39 billion, securing second place. SK plans to dynamically adjust capacity in response to fluctuations in demand, positioning itself as a comprehensive AI ecosystem memory supplier through HBM, DRAM, and enterprise SSD offerings.
Kioxia, ranked third, saw enterprise SSD shipments offset weak smartphone and PC demand, limiting its Q4 revenue decline to just 0.2% QoQ, reaching $2.66 billion. The company is increasing NAND Flash layer count and significantly improving data transfer speeds, leveraging existing equipment for technological upgrades.
Micron, despite strong enterprise SSD shipments, was unable to counterbalance weak consumer demand, with Q4 NAND Flash revenue down 9.3% QoQ to $2.28 billion, placing it fourth. In 2025, Micron will cut capital expenditures on NAND Flash, slow down technology upgrades, and focus on 60 TB + SSD demand to improve profitability.
Western Digital/SanDisk, ranked fifth, saw consumer NAND product shipments exceed expectations, leading to a QoQ increase in total bit shipments. Despite falling prices, NAND Flash revenue remained flat at $1.88 billion. As NVIDIA's Project Digits and the AI PC trend gain traction, SanDisk, a key PC SSD supplier, is expected to see steady revenue growth starting in 2Q25.
15 Comments on Weak Consumer Electronics Demand Drives 4Q24 NAND Flash Revenue Down 6.2% QoQ, Says TrendForce
And why should consumer be enthusiastic about the offerings?
No matter how the makers and reviewers try to spin the increase in sequential speeds, real world performance in day to day task is basically unaffected for last half of decade, capacity is stagnating for more than half of decade*, and price wise we are now in second year of "correction" that rised the prices across all makers and capacities.
* - well, not entirely true, more and more lines of drives that had previously 4 TB as maximum capacity are now offering max 2 TB.
It's evolving, just backwards!
Because during and after the Covid, most of the NAND makers (and many other mfgrs too) started acting like scalpers on steroids on more steroids, taking advantage of the situation, with absolutely ZERO concern for consumers, who were losing their jobs, getting laid off, or forced into working from home, and then when demand starting easing, they failed to adjust their production, which in turn caused massive oversupplies, which in turn required significant price drops to clear the excess inventory, and so on & so on...
Aint capitalism a fickle but double-edged, sword-swinging biotch ?
It's their own fault, so as far as I am concerned, they can B.M.A, since I stocked up at the end of '24, by buying over $7K worth of m.2's (when the prices bottomed out), so I'm set for the foreseeable future storage-wise :D
A couple points of reference:
Samsung V-NAND V2, 40 nm, 32-layer, one of the first 3D dies, 2014 = 128 Gbit on 69 mm²
Kioxia BiCS8, unknown nm, 218-layer, one of the latest 3D dies, 2024 = 1 Tbit on 60 mm²
Ten years, about 9x increase in density because layers, but only about 1.3x increase in density per layer. Realistically, the process is still 40 nm.
Another point of reference: Planar Micron 34 nm dies from 2008 had about 3x the density per layer compared to the above two examples.
This is a few years old, but I can't find any more recent comparison, but this roughly shows the nodes the big players are on and it's unlikely anyone is below 14 nm and that's on 2D NAND, the 3D stuff seems to be closer to 20 nm.
Sorry for the bad quality image, but the one below should help work out the node sizes, even though it's in traditional Chinese.
They obviously talk to companies in Asia, but I'm not sure how good insight they have into the rest of the world.