According to a report made by research company Trend Force, manufacturers of flash memory will be ramping down on the production of older technology nodes that is built using the older 48/36 layer 3D NAND technology (this refers to flash memory based upon the broader term TLC technology) while keeping up their production schedule for newer 64 and 96 layer technologies.  

Low(er) mobile demand

The explanation given by a previous report from Trend Force suggests a weaker than expected demand for flash storage capacities in the mobile segment of the market.

To ensure continued profitability, many manufacturers have already announced in recent months to cut down on the production to desaturate the market. As the report suggests, suppliers will be trying to stimulate the prices upwards (by reducing supply) for consumer SSDs within the very popular 512Gb to 1Tb range.

Namely they are SK Hynix, Micro and Intel. Samsung is also expected to follow suit but no announcement has been made on their end as of yet.

“For Client SSDs, suppliers will be increasing the falling pressure of 512GB/1TB product prices to stimulate content-per-box growth. This, along with the gradually increasing proportion of good value PCIe SSDs (Gen 3.0×2) in product shipments, will drive a larger drop in ASP, accelerating the rate at which SSDs are introduced into laptops.”

Trend Force Report

If you guys have not picked up some cheap SSDs recently, now is certainly the time to do so before the market adjusts due to the decrease in flash memory production. Currently, you could probably pick yourself up a nice 1Tb NvMe SSD for about $200 USD during a sale like I did the past Black Friday.

Via Notebookcheck & AnandTech

Report via Trend Force

Chia is the horse-author from the far flung year of 2153. While not grazing on grass pastures or reviewing old time-y games and technology from the early 21st century pretending to not know what comes next (as to not disturb the space-time continuum), he can be seen exchanging vast quantities of Earth currency for parts needed to fix his damaged space ship.