Toshiba Cuts NAND Flash Production by 30 Percent
According to the company, oversupply of NAND flash memory USB and memory card devices has caused price declines since early 2012. Toshiba initially reduced its shipment rate, but is now taking more drastic measures and will decrease its production pace at its Yokkaichi Operation plant in Mie Prefecture, Japan.
Toshiba expects macroeconomic concerns to ease in the current quarter and said that it believes that growth rates for PCs and smartphones will improve in the July to September quarter. Once the company demand is picking up, the company said it will be reacting in a "timely" fashion and adjust its production volume again.
Yes.
It's what we've seen in the HDD market, what we've seen in the RAM market. They basically have a car with only two speeds - either they're so fast in development that they have to do these planned holdups so they can let supply drop down a bit. on the other side of it, they're not going to ramp back up in time to keep prices from bouncing up high because of shortages. The best thing anyone can don now is try not to overreact. Don't go buying up flash drives and SSDs anticipating some price hike because you'll probably be contributing to it. And when/if prices do go up, just be a little diligent in looking for deals, and a little patient for them to come down again.
Instead of pushing emerging markets such as the SSD market by building more Fabs, they're just going to limit those markets by lowering production output to jack up the prices and costs, which have been steadily declining. So instead of doing things to push production, they cut production back and jack up the price and hurt said emerging markets.
Or does Toshiba only make the crappy slow flash products that are found in most USB drives and such?
There isn't much of an issue here. Obviously, people want cheaper NAND, but companies want a profit. Samsung recently claimed losses in the NAND and RAM production departments of its company. RAM is a terrible market to be in right now for the very same reason NAND is becoming terrible. There is more supply than demand. We are not in a situation where NAND devices are unobtainable, we are in a situation where it is not profitable to produce NAND. The worst case would be if one of these large producers to just drop out of the industry altogether. If people actually start buying SSDs instead of waiting for the price to decline or swapping old SSD's into their new computers, there would be no reason for production cuts.
Intel doesn't create a new processor and then sell it cheaper than their last generation processors. The stability in the price of processors makes that market incredibly profitable. Numerous SSD reviewers have said that upgrading to an SSD is the single most beneficial computer upgrade you can perform. Yet, people are more willing to spend $200 to upgrade their processor for a 10-20% increase in computational performance than they are to spend $150 on an upgrade from an HDD to an SSD that provides a much more noticeable improvement to performance.
The NAND industry is looking for more stability in their market. With prices declining on a weekly basis, most people are just waiting for them to hit rock bottom before buying an SSD. No point in buying something today if I can buy it next week for less money, or next month for significantly less. That waiting period is not survivable for the business trying to sell it to you. A more stable system would involve decreasing the price/GB as new process technology is implemented that allows more storage capacity per sq. inch of silicon. If the price of 128GB drives were to change every 6 months instead of every week, people would be less inclined to enter that never ending waiting cycle.
The idea that a company would intentionally hurt an emerging market that it has billions of dollars invested in is foolish.
@Thunderfox: Toshiba produces some of the fastest NAND available (Toggle DDR 2.0), along with Samsung. I don't know how far along Micron is with its next generation NAND (ONFI 3.0). I've only heard of the new top performing NAND being marketed for mobile devices (smartphones and tablets).
you dont get it. supply is so high, and demand is so low, that if production keeps happening, they could create so much there is no way to turn a profit from it.
everyone is right now tring to be the best and the cheapest, and they pushed the price way down.
get me the size in of a chip, the nm process used, gb on the chip, get me all that infromation and i can figure out about how much a gb of ssd space should cost.
ssds are expensive BECAUSE THEY USE SILICON WAFERS, 1 wafer is about 50000$ from beginning to end of the process, at least in the cpu side. this cost can ONLY come down because of
1) changes in the manufacturing process
2) shrinking of the manufacturing process.
intel is building a 450mm plant, this means that in the long run, their chips will get cheaper to make by up to 50%... i forget how much more space there is from a 300mm to a 450mm waffer.
just because they make a crap ton of memory, doesn't mean that it will be cheaper.
wrong you want to make it more profitable, you have to make the wafers bigger and shrink the process.
i dont blame them, but its annoying that it needs to be said every single time.
this is one market where competition is killing it.