Earlier this 12 months, SSD prices were falling, however of late, we’ve heard some buzz about this case being reversed – and right here’s one other piece of chatter about the price of solid-state drives probably heading upwards.
Tom’s Hardware introduced our consideration to a DigiTimes report which claims (add seasoning, as ever) that Phison, a producer of reminiscence controllers for SSDs (and a few drives too), is prepaying chip suppliers to make sure that it has sufficient NAND chips in inventory for its wants going ahead.
In different phrases, the agency foresees a scarcity of NAND chips, so it’s shopping for upfront to fight potential provide difficulties (and paying extra) down the road.
We’re informed that that is based on KS Pua, who’s the CEO (and founder) of Phison, so a supply in a superb place to know, to place it mildly (including appreciable weight to the report, in fact).
If NAND chips are going to get thinner on the bottom, pricing will go up, and the price of making SSDs will rise – and naturally that extra expense can be handed onto customers.
Evaluation: Inventory correction
This might imply that some fairly chunky hikes are going to be seen for SSDs sooner or later. Certainly, most SSDs have already been sustaining their pricing, and even creeping up somewhat bit, in distinct distinction to the falls we’ve gotten used to all through 2023.
What’s occurred is that as this 12 months started, there was far an excessive amount of inventory swimming round, so SSDs needed to be offloaded utilizing tempting pricing. Nonetheless, with producers slicing manufacturing – the plain response to that glut of inventory – we’re now seeing the consequences of that.
All of which signifies that if you wish to purchase one of many best SSDs, you actually must get in and do it sooner quite than later. And with Black Friday likely to bring at least some deals and discounts on solid-state drives, these are in all probability going to be the cheapest prices on SSDs that you simply’ll see for a while – certainly, possibly a very long time.
Discussion about this post