SSD price increase incoming?

[birthdaymonkey]

Just saw this news item posted on Kirguru:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/faith/ssd-prices-jump-as-toshiba-cuts-production/

Anyone seeing price increases? A quick check of Newegg seems to show that nothing has changed...yet.

 

[shadow_k]

no changes in price in europe heck ssd go on sale very frequently

 

[OlafSicky]

Yep it's coming the days of cheap SSD are over there will be a massive increase after September.

 

[bryanW1995]

So, they searched for the cheapest price a few months ago, then searched for the highest price today. Shocking that they aren't identical...

 

[frostedflakes]

Oh noes

Maybe it's time to go ahead and take the plunge on 256GB...

 

[poohbear]

lol how did you get that SSD prices are expected to go up after reading that article???? i swear some ppl seem to jump to conclusion out of complete boredom!

The article says Toshiba is following supply & demand. there's alot of supply right now so they feel they don't need to keep producing SSD chips until demand picks up. They said they'll go back to full production in Q3, which isnt very far in the future at all.

 

[bryanW1995]

Not only that, but it now looks like the "price war" is really just "crucial vs the world". And crucial is winning right now. Once they get the m4's through the channel and start producing next gen parts in earnest, then we will likely see a stabilization or even rise in prices.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I say prices will fall.

 

[bryanW1995]

They typically do over the long run, but in our current situation (extreme oversupply, weak demand) we have probably pulled forward some of the price decreases that we would likely have seen in the coming months (or even years). So a temporary correction is possible/probable, though there should be little if any impact on the long-term trend of lower prices.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I say prices will fall.

Can we get JFAMD's take on this?

 

[bryanW1995]

Read my lips: PRICES WILL FALL. Eventually. At least on a per-core basis. After auto-overclocking-mumbo-jumbo is factored in. We are calling the new ssd's "BSDozer".

 

[dmoney1980]

I have about 12gb left on my 64gb crucial m4. thinking about getting the 256gb m4 from micro center for $189, which is a nice everyday price

 

[Hellhammer]

I don't think we'll see price increases, but it's possible that the decline in prices will get smaller due to this. FYI, http://www.insye.com/ and http://www.dramexchange.com/ are good sites for following NAND prices. Usually NAND contract prices are a week or two ahead of SSD prices (i.e. decrease in NAND prices = decrease in SSD prices is expected within a few weeks).

 

[ronbo613]

Got a Samsung 830 128G for $90 and Kingston HyperX SSD 120G for $80 recently, hard to believe they would be much cheaper in the near future. Anyway, I have all the SSD's that I need, so I don't care if the prices go up or down.

 

[billyb0b]

I say prices will fall.

I concur

 

[BFG10K]

I think what’s more significant here is the fact that Toshiba is artificially cutting back NAND production.

 

[RU482]

rumor is - prices could go up due to iPhone5 NAND consumption

 

[tdg84]

rumor has it that a new technology better than SSD will be released in several years and SSD will seem so slow that no one will need one. But by then they will have iPhone10 which will be integrated into your cranium and computers will then be obsolete, so this new technology that i speak of being faster that SSD will also be pointless because no one will need computers; our brains will be the computer.

 

[Lonyo]

There's definitely something funny going on.
http://www.dramexchange.com/

Spot price low of $3, high of $6.65, same for all the three MLC options, highs of around twice the lows. That's not usual behaviour.

SLC and TLC seem unaffected, MLC is all over the place for the day.

Except, apparently, the cutback from Toshiba mainly affects TLC products....
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120801PD204.html

Toshiba's recent product cutback targets mainly production of TLC (triple-level cell) NAND chips used mainly for USB drives and memory cards, the sources revealed. The supply cut has led to a substantial rally in chip prices, discouraging downstream distributors from stockpiling inventory, the sources said.

Which means apart from a few dirty low end SSDs, there shouldn't me a significant impact on the SSD market, unless it pushes current other TLC users, such as memory sticks, towards MLC, but that would be a massive hurt for them.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120802VL200.html
Toshiba were already losing marketshare anyway.
And Elpida/Micron might shake things up a bit anyway.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

How many independent makers of SSD parts and SSDs are operating in the market? What are the "barriers to entry" for other firms?

Rule of thumb is that an industry must be concentrated to less than seven competitors for a stable cartel. But stable cartels are more difficult in an environment that includes FTC and DOJ AntiTrust Division.

Otherwise, over time, production costs fall, quality increases, firms capture their research/development costs from sales. The R&D costs are fixed costs for a given product-line, so average fixed cost is always dropping as more quantity is produced and sold. And prices fall.

Eventually, we'll have to ask if HDDs will become totally obsolete. But the HDD makers are throwing out larger and larger HDDs, at lower price/GB. As long as large HDDs are significantly larger than available SSDs, they will have a niche. But there's no guarantee of such a status-quo lasting forever.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Well we just had a major price drop on our Intel® SSD 320's, 330's and 520's. In some cases they have dropped as much as 38%. So I don't know about any price increase on our SSD's.

 

[bryanW1995]

330 and 520 prices are very aggressive right now, but if you guys really want to get serious again about selling ssd's then 330's need to start going to toe-to-toe with the m4 on price.