According to sources in the supply chain, demand for SSDS is picking up. While NAND flash is still oversupplied, contract prices for NAND flash will stabilize and start rising in the second quarter due to a severe shortage of control chips that will lead to higher SSD prices.The supply of NAND flash memory controllers remains tight, people said.Supply of NAND flash memory controllers remains tight, which could affect shipments of embedded storage devices and solid-state drives.

In terms of supply and demand, if supply of NAND flash controllers remains tight, as industry sources suggest, it could affect shipments of embedded storage devices and solid-state drives, and ultimately prices.According to Pan Jiancheng, chairman of Qunlian Electronics, the current 8-inch capacity of Qunlian mainly produces power management chips, and the supply is relatively sufficient;Due to the demand for mobile phones, the supply rate is only about 50%;NVMe series of SSDS are also well supplied, but SATA series master supply rate is about 70%.I guess, the lack of goods may be SATA series master.

It is reported that the media said that wafer foundry shortage tide extended to NAND Flash control IC.Market news, qunlian formally raised the PRICE of NAND Flash control IC products, up to 20%, for the first time in nearly eight years.

Qunlian is not the only one, huirong is also facing a shortage of capacity.According to Huirong general manager Gou Jiazhang, memory Q2 continued to rise mature process lack of capacity outlook for the first quarter of next year, in Samsung, Changjiang Storage, SK Hynix and Intel are more positive on the bit output, NAND Flash oversupply situation will be more obvious.

The United States is still tightening trade restrictions on Chinese semiconductor factories, and TSMC and UMC will not invest in the capacity of the old process. Due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the capacity of the mature process will be short until next year.Huirong General Manager Gou Jiazhang said the previous market forecast this year NAND Flash is oversupply, but including personal computers, servers, smart phones and other strong demand, prices have stopped falling in March, the second quarter NAND Flash prices are expected to change from the original forecast of a quarterly decline of 5 to 10 percent to a small upward trend.As for DRAM demand is clear, prices will rise all the way into the second quarter.

Gou believes that the shortage of foundry capacity will not only continue to the end of the year, the market is expected to have a chance to ease the situation in 2022, and the mature process capacity shortage will be more serious than this year.Mature process capacity in short supply situation this year could quarter by quarter, the reason is that foundries too little investment in the mature process in recent years, but now out of stock, the chip including microcontroller (MCU), power management IC, control panel driving IC, memory IC, such as the outbreak under multiple growth demand, foundries could not cope with.

Control chips need to be paired with NAND Flash to make solid state drives, which means limited supply of control ics will help drive the weak NAND market.For this wave of market, qunlian also said that low and medium capacity product supply is affected, module is also expected to rebound possibility, qunlian and Huirong and other main manufacturers will be expected to benefit.