Samsung Reportedly Raising Prices for Its SSD Lineup in Early 2022, Amidst Lower Market Pricing

[Raevenlord]

DigiTimes, citing sources within the industry, reports that Samsung is mulling a price raise for its own-brand SSDs. The report doesn't put a number or percentage to the prospective price increase, but it also states that Samsung is seemingly moving in the opposite direction of other SSD vendors. Samsung's competition is expected to lower overall pricing by up to 10% in an attempt to increase product attractiveness after facing lower than expected demand.

Samsung is one of the world's largest manufacturers of NAND chips, and enjoys a fully vertical SSD development capability: the company manufactures its own NAND and controller chips, which has led to a strong foothold in both the industry and in consumer's expectations for SSD speed and reliability. It thus seems strange that the company would move in the opposite direction of the remaining industry, especially considering how it benefits from economies of scale and (expectedly) higher product margins than companies that don't manufacture their own NAND. However, Samsung has recently cut its production guidance for both its Xi'an, China NAND factories after local COVID-19 surges forced partial lockdowns. These factories are responsible for around 40% of Samsung's global NAND output - and thus, they also account for around 7% of global NAND production.



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[Dazzm8]

High demand, higher prices!

Low demand, higher prices!


What a time to be alive.

 

[Garrus]

High demand, higher prices!

Low demand, higher prices!


What a time to be alive.

Don't worry, no one has to buy Samsung SSDs. They are not dominant. Just don't buy their products. There's nothing special about them anymore. They are not the best in SSDs (that would be WD and Sandisk). They are not the best at TVs (that would be LG). They are not the best for phones (Chinese stuff plus Apple). Don't buy. Problem solved.

 

[ARF]

I will also recommend to avoid Samsung because its products are nothing special and not worth it.

 

[john_]

Don't worry, no one has to buy Samsung SSDs. They are not dominant. Just don't buy their products. There's nothing special about them anymore. They are not the best in SSDs (that would be WD and Sandisk). They are not the best at TVs (that would be LG). They are not the best for phones (Chinese stuff plus Apple). Don't buy. Problem solved.

I lost you in "WD and Sandisk"....

 

[ARF]

I lost you in "WD and Sandisk"....

Both of my laptop drives are WD, one is WDC WDS500G2B0B, and the second is WDC WD10SPZX.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Reverse psychology...

 

[ARF]

Reverse psychology...

The usual words are greed and arrogance

 

[BSim500]

For when that Samsung Premium still isn't high enough...

 

[Chaitanya]

Don't worry, no one has to buy Samsung SSDs. They are not dominant. Just don't buy their products. There's nothing special about them anymore. They are not the best in SSDs (that would be WD and Sandisk). They are not the best at TVs (that would be LG). They are not the best for phones (Chinese stuff plus Apple). Don't buy. Problem solved.

Enjoy the bait and switch that WD loves to pull along with too many similarly named SKUs with confusing specifications.

 

[tomo82]

Don't worry, no one has to buy Samsung SSDs. They are not dominant. Just don't buy their products. There's nothing special about them anymore. They are not the best in SSDs (that would be WD and Sandisk). They are not the best at TVs (that would be LG). They are not the best for phones (Chinese stuff plus Apple). Don't buy. Problem solved.

Yep, going to vote with my wallet - if price/performance isn't up to scratch I will not buy. End of story. They are not top dog at anything they do now, absolutely no reason to overpay...

 

[BSim500]

Enjoy the bait and switch that WD loves to pull along with too many similarly named SKUs with confusing specifications.

Unfortunately they're nearly all guilty (including Samsung, ADATA, WD, Crucial, etc):-

Samsung is the latest SSD maker spotted swapping components

To Samsung's credit it has changed its 970 Evo Plus box, part number, and spec sheets.

www.hexus.net

Adata Switches NAND on XPG SX8200 Pro SSD Again, Affecting Performance (Updated)

Adata changes Flash, leading to potentially-slower performance.

www.tomshardware.com

Western Digital Caught Bait-and-Switching Customers With Slow SSDs

Western Digital is the latest company caught bait-and-switching its customers with lousy SSD speeds. In other news, Samsung and Intel don't appear to be trying to cheat customers this way, while Crucial and Adata apparently are.

www.extremetech.com

Buyer Beware: Crucial Swaps P2 SSD's TLC NAND for Slower Chips

Crucial is the latest company to get caught shipping a fast SSD to reviewers and much slower customer hardware. Most of the time the companies we catch doing this aren't actually the ones building their own NAND.

www.extremetech.com

The entire storage market is so pathologically dishonest ("Mebibytes and Megabytes are the same thing!", "Shingled Magnetic Recording makes great NAS drives!", "We no longer state whether SSD's are TLC or QLC so we can swap between them without lawsuits!"), that what's really needed is a widely published up to date spreadsheet of good drives clearly marked in green and the degraded ones + QLC trash highlighted in bright red, and then reference / link to / quote the hell out of it on every Amazon / Newegg, review / ordinary Joe website.

 

[EatingDirt]

I lost you in "WD and Sandisk"....

I'd assume they're saying that there's no point in buying a Samsung over that of Sandisk & WD, the prime competition as well as fellow in-house designer of controllers. The Samsung Pro's are no longer MLC, so there's not really an incentive to buy them over a current gen WD Black(SN850) if you care about performance. Current Gen WD Blue's(SN570) also have better value/performance than the 970's & 980's from Samsung. The WD lineup is small, like the Samsung lineup, but has overall better value-per-performance than the Samsung lineup.

There are other good, simple lineups out there of course. Crucial, Corsair & HP come to mind but none of these companies make their own controllers like WD/Sandisk & Samsung.

 

[ARF]

I prefer XPG GAMMIX
XPG GAMMIX S11 Pro PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 Solid State Drive
XPG GAMMIX S70 PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 Solid State Drive

 

[Chaitanya]

Unfortunately they're nearly all guilty (including Samsung, ADATA, WD, Crucial, etc):-

Samsung is the latest SSD maker spotted swapping components

To Samsung's credit it has changed its 970 Evo Plus box, part number, and spec sheets.

www.hexus.net

Adata Switches NAND on XPG SX8200 Pro SSD Again, Affecting Performance (Updated)

Adata changes Flash, leading to potentially-slower performance.

www.tomshardware.com

Western Digital Caught Bait-and-Switching Customers With Slow SSDs

Western Digital is the latest company caught bait-and-switching its customers with lousy SSD speeds. In other news, Samsung and Intel don't appear to be trying to cheat customers this way, while Crucial and Adata apparently are.

www.extremetech.com

Buyer Beware: Crucial Swaps P2 SSD's TLC NAND for Slower Chips

Crucial is the latest company to get caught shipping a fast SSD to reviewers and much slower customer hardware. Most of the time the companies we catch doing this aren't actually the ones building their own NAND.

www.extremetech.com

The entire storage market is so pathologically dishonest ("Mebibytes and Megabytes are the same thing!", "Shingled Magnetic Recording makes great NAS drives!", "We no longer state whether SSD's are TLC or QLC so we can swap between them without lawsuits!"), that what's really needed is a widely published up to date spreadsheet of good drives clearly marked in green and the degraded ones + QLC trash highlighted in bright red, and then reference / link to / quote the hell out of it on every Amazon / Newegg, review / ordinary Joe website.

Even laptop makers are guilty of this practice, Asus is one of the first to do bait and switch on their laptop ssds. Currently only Seagate hasnt been caught with their pants down but wont be surprised to find they also have been doing the same.

 

[Garrus]

I lost you in "WD and Sandisk"....

The SN850 from WD is the top drive. The SN570 is the top value drive. So they are winning there versus the 980 Pro and 980 by a long shot already. Did you read any of Techpowerup's reviews?

For the best value? That would be XPG Gammix, you can get some amazing deals on their stuff, even in easy to find locations like Amazon. But the best quality is WD right now.

 

[sepheronx]

Just an FYI, I read that Samsung wants to also introduce NFT trading and what not special browser in their future TV's.

Samsung promises “groundbreaking” new TV feature: NFT support

Enjoy your crypto-funded digital art on the big screen.

www.theverge.com

Let the rage commence.

 

[EatingDirt]

I prefer XPG GAMMIX
XPG GAMMIX S11 Pro PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 Solid State Drive
XPG GAMMIX S70 PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 Solid State Drive

ADATA has 13 different NVME SSD's. It's a hot mess of a lineup(https://www.adata.com/us/xpg/category/ssds). Even the Gammix line comes in a S7, S11 Pro, S50 Lite, S70 & S70 Blade. What am I supposed to do with this information? Does the number even correspond to the performance of the drive? What does the "Lite", "Pro", & "Blade" mean in this naming scheme?

 

[Bomby569]

With so many brands destroying their credibility in the past, Samsung can afford to increase prices when they decrease them. Smart business

i know Samsung also did shaddy, but no where near what many others did that you can't trust them.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

The usual words are greed and arrogance

I have to agree here. This reads like Samsungs current profit margin just is not large enough for stockholders. Kick 'em while they're down (current market).

 

[docnorth]

Don't worry, no one has to buy Samsung SSDs. They are not dominant. Just don't buy their products. There's nothing special about them anymore. They are not the best in SSDs (that would be WD and Sandisk). They are not the best at TVs (that would be LG). They are not the best for phones (Chinese stuff plus Apple). Don't buy. Problem solved.

I agree that we don't have to buy Samsung.
On the other hand LG TVs may be top BUT only on specs, not in terms of real life usage and reliability (it's the same with Sony cameras e.g.). And if I had to choose between Samsung and Apple for a phone, it would be definitely Samsung. Just for the record, right now we have no Samsung phone in our 5-member family.

 

[Bomby569]

With a good sale you can find cheap samsung ssd's and i still prefer them, good quality, no stress. All my ssd's purchases were bought on sale.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

The SN850 from WD is the top drive. The SN570 is the top value drive.

Do you mean SN750? That's the PCI-E gen 3 version.

 

[duynguyenle]

Do you mean SN750? That's the PCI-E gen 3 version.

No. He meant the Sn570, not SN750.

The SN570 is a recent release (mid-2021) that was meant to be a replacement to the SN550 which was caught in the TLC-QLC scandal. Specs and performance are somewhat similar to the 'old' TLC SN550 before they did the bait and switch to QLC

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I agree that we don't have to buy Samsung.
On the other hand LG TVs may be top BUT only on specs, not in terms of real life usage and reliability (it's the same with Sony cameras e.g.). And if I had to choose between Samsung and Apple for a phone, it would be definitely Samsung. Just for the record, right now we have no Samsung phone in our 5-member family.

In terms of reliability, you're giving a win to Samsung? Really? Their electronics, from TVs to washers to fridges, are well known for failing right outside of warranty. A pillar of quality they are not.

Same with phones. If I get a call from someone saying their phone is out of storage, 99% of the time it's a samsung that has filled its filesystem with crap. Never have I seen an LG, motorola, HTC, pixel, or apple phone do this.

Samsung is a flaming pile of garbage right now.

With so many brands destroying their credibility in the past, Samsung can afford to increase prices when they decrease them. Smart business

i know Samsung also did shaddy, but no where near what many others did that you can't trust them.

It's "shady". "shaddy", per urban dictionary, is not something anyone woudl want to think about.

Samsung has been caught doing the exact same shady dealings as all the other manufacturers, and has been caught doing this garbage for years (remember their TV capacitor issues?). They have no trus tor standing to be raising prices, and I hope it backfires on them.