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TAP TIMES -22- SEPTEMBER 2022
With inventories “bloated,” Previously ascendant, DDR3 has a long
consumer DRAM prices drop way to fall; DDR4 also maintains down-
ward trend amid factories’ strategic shift
TAIPEI, Taiwan — According to Trend-
Force investigations into the DRAM High watermark reached last year
market, under pressure from ever-in- DDR3, pricing reached a high watermark
creasing output, Korean manufactur- last year due to aggressive pricing strate-
ers have significantly increased their gies adopted by Korean manufacturers.
willingness to compromise on pricing
to stimulate buying from distributors Taking DDR3 4Gb as an example, this
and customers. This is leading to a product sold at an approximate 60% pre-
steady expansion of falling prices. mium compared to its historic low.
The progress of customers’ switch to DDR4
Low-priced “spot market” is more optimistic than expected. There-
In addition to Korean manufacturers en- fore, as the scale of the DDR3 market has
thusiastically slashing prices, low-priced obviously contracted, there will be a lot of
chips from the spot market are also circu- room for further decline in the future.
lating in the market.
Migrating to new processes
Other suppliers have no choice but to fol- Although the current price of DDR4 is rela-
low suit and fervently reduce pricing for tively low, its process is more advanced
sales, rapidly exacerbating the 3Q con- than that of DDR3 and the three major
sumer DRAM price drop from the original manufacturers still have plans to continue
estimate of 8~13% to a quarterly decline the migration to new processes.
of 13-18%.
Cost will be effectively reduced, so pricing
Looking forward to Q4, it will be difficult trends are expected to continue down-
for stocking momentum to recover before ward. trendforce.com
terminal inventories have been completely
depleted. Qualcomm expands its
GlobalFoundries contract
Continued decline seen
TrendForce expects the price of consumer WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following the
DRAM to continue to fall until oversupply passage of the U.S. CHIPS and Science
in the market is alleviated. Thus, consum- Act, GlobalFoundries and Qualcomm
er DRAM pricing will carry on moving lower said they are more than doubling their
by another 3~8% in Q4 and the possibility existing strategic global, long-term
of sustained decline cannot be ruled out. semiconductor manufacturing agree-
ment previously entered into by GF’s
and Qualcomm’s respective subsidiar-
ies.
The announcement secures wafer supply
and commitments to support U.S.-based
manufacturing through capacity expansion
at GF’s Malta, N.Y. facility.
