Memory Module Prices Rise, While Low-Capacity eMMC Slips

Following the National Day holiday, the current spot memory market has yet to regain momentum, with trading sentiment remaining sluggish. Finished product prices showed mixed performance: driven by rising resource costs, most channel and industry memory modules saw slight price increases, while embedded eMMC/UFS products with capacities of 64GB and below experienced price declines this week due to persistently weak demand and continuously falling trade prices for related finished goods.

From the upstream resource perspective, high-grade DDR particles remain in tight supply, with some original manufacturers only releasing limited resources to core customers and raising prices slightly on a monthly basis. After nearly four consecutive months of price hikes by original manufacturers, DDR5 secondary-grade particle prices have reached new highs. Given that PC OEMs can no longer accept higher memory module prices, the elevated particle costs can no longer be passed on to finished products, prompting some memory manufacturers to adopt a cautious stocking strategy. However, as certain manufacturers have recently expanded applications of DDR5 secondary-grade particle-based finished products into fields such as servers, where customers have higher price acceptance, they continue to purchase costly DDR5 secondary-grade particles, thereby driving further price increases for original manufacturers' DDR5 16Gb eTT. Specifically, this week, DDR4 8Gb 3200, DDR5 24Gb Major, DDR5 16Gb Major, and DDR5 16Gb eTT prices rose slightly to $22.40, $58.00, $46.00, and $27.00, respectively.

As for Flash Wafer, since mid-to-late March this year, wafer trade prices have been significantly inverted against original manufacturers' official prices, with the price gap continuing to widen. The mainstream 512Gb NAND trade price has fallen to around $0.30/Gb. Although downstream memory manufacturers' inventories are gradually building up and their enthusiasm for resource stocking continues to decline, original manufacturers remain firm in maintaining stable prices and will promote shipments through bundling, complimentary offers, and other preferential conditions in the future. While panic selling is unlikely in the trade market before original manufacturers shift their wafer pricing stance, market sentiment remains depressed, and some traders continue to offload inventory to clear stock, making it difficult for wafer trade prices to stabilize in the short term.