Global Flash supply tensions new iPhone prices just started
The price increase on the iPhone is not unexpected, but the question of response is worth pondering.
In recent years, the price trend of electronic products has been continuously declining, and people are accustomed to buying better-quality electronic products at lower and lower prices. However, since the beginning of last year, the electronic products industry has undergone a dramatic change. The prices of mobile phones, computers, and home appliances have started to rise and continue to this day.
In early 2017, Meizu announced that its 16GB and 32GB versions of its Note5 handsets had a price increase of RMB 100. The price increase was due to the increase in BOM costs. (BOM Chinese means a bill of materials. Popularly speaking, BOM is to integrate the product structure, process flow, etc. of a certain product. Through the BOM bill, you can clearly know the cost price of a major part of a mobile phone. In other industries, BOM prices are rarely announced.) Then Lenovo, Xiaomi, Meizu, LeTV, and Jinli have all announced price adjustments for the products they sell. The price of the products has been raised by about 100 yuan.
The rise in mobile phone prices has long been a clue. The problem of tight flash memory supply has all been revealed in 2016.
Since last year, the prices of memory and SSD have started to rise. The price of 8GB DDR4 memory has risen from the original 200 yuan to more than 500 yuan. At the beginning, major Flash makers provided flash memory with priority to mobile phones. The mobile phone industry has not been affected by twists and turns, and by 2017, Flash memory manufacturers have had to raise prices to reduce supply chain pressure because of the terrible flash memory consumption.
Mr. Pan Jiancheng, chairman of Qilian Electronics, once mentioned that any electronic product relies on flash memory. Therefore, the issue of tight supply of flash memory has affected not only the mobile phone and PC industries, but also automobiles, hospitals, education, and home appliances.
With the release of the new iPhone, electronic products will also start a new round of price increases.
Flash out of stock problem for 1 year without solution
According to IDC data, the data generated from 2013 to 2020 will grow 10 times to 44ZB, and will generate 160 ZB data by 2025. However, the flash memory capacity has not followed the pace of data growth in the past two years. In the second half of 2017, only a new iPhone product will exhaust the flash memory particles for the whole year, and there will be a 30% supply gap. For other mobile phone brands and SSD memory industries, the difficulty of purchasing Flash chips can be controversial.
As we all know, the problem of Flash out-of-stock problems stems from the original factory's technical upgrading of flash memory particles, but the difficulty of 3D NAND technology is higher than expected, and the production capacity cannot meet the market demand. So at this stage, the NAND Flash price has seen the largest and longest sustained price increase in history. According to China's flash memory market price, the price per GB of NAND Flash has increased from US$0.12 in 2016 to US$0.3, the price of mainstream eMMC has increased by more than 60%, the price of SSD has exceeded 80%, and the price increase rate is significant in the hardware industry. It is rare.
Some manufacturers 8GB memory prices up to 769 yuan
The problem of Flash stock shortage may not be solved in the short term. Although the original factory has fully popularized 3D NAND, the problem is also obvious: 3D NAND technology is more complex, and the time required to produce large-capacity flash memory particles is longer than 2D. And several major manufacturers increase their production capacity at the same time, but also face the shortage of wafers.
How long will store out of stock last? Let's take a look at the development of the original 3D NAND as follows:
Samsung, Toshiba/WD, and Micron/Intel all produce 64-layer 3D NAND, SK Hynix produces 72-layer 3D NAND, Samsung 64-layer 3D NAND is used in its own products, and 64-layer 3D NAND is available in Q4. To customers; Toshiba's 64-layer 256Gbit has been in volume production; Micron's 64-layer B16A (256Gbit) has been in volume production.
Although the recent 3D NAND production capacity has improved, it is still too small compared to the expected smartphone market of 1.5 billion units. Moreover, users are now more interested in capacity mobile phones with 128GB or more. And the original flash memory will give priority to the server-level SSD market. Taking the above factors into consideration, I believe that the tight supply of smart flash memory will continue until the end of the year, while the SSD and memory markets will continue to be mid-2018 or even longer.
The problem consumers face is not only price increase
The global supply of flash memory is tight, and the problem it raises is not just about the price increase.
Careful readers may find a problem. Although these vendors are struggling with the supply chain every day, SSDs and memory products have never been broken. Prior to mining because of the AMD graphics card out of stock is very thorough, in addition to some of the individual sellers in the free fish sale, the player almost no way to buy graphics.
Then, besides the major original factories and formal downstream manufacturers, where is the domestic source of Shanzhai SSDs and memory sources?
The answer is that flash memory particles have become a strange sign of a "cyclic" chain due to a serious shortage of flash memory.
We know that the original factory will give priority to the supply of flash memory particles to the server-class market, followed by smart phones, and then the SSD and memory market. The server-class market has a huge volume. For example, Intel, Amazon, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, etc. will eliminate a large number of SSDs that have been completely read-and-read but have not been lost. The way they destroy it is also very simple, that is to punch a hole in the SSD master, but the flash memory particles are intact.
After domestic domestic SSDs and memory manufacturers recycle this kind of “foreign garbage,†the flash granules are removed and the LOGO is polished off and the new LOGO is reprinted. At this point, scrapped SSD flash granules have become new products.
If the quality of the recycled “Junk Garbage†is too bad, then they will not lose it but make a U disk product.
Data from China's flash memory market
For example, we can understand the secret: According to China's flash memory market price, we can find that USB 3.0 16GB flash memory quoted at about 41.5 yuan, but now the market price of low-quality 16GB U disk sold only 30 yuan Among them, I don't think I'd believe everyone would understand.
Now this kind of phenomenon only appears in the PC industry, but if the issue of flash memory supply continues to ferment, and some smart phone manufacturers insist on fighting the price war, it is only a matter of time before the industry is affected.
Whether it is a mobile phone, a PC, or a USB flash drive, once consumers purchase such products, the loss of money will be small, and losing important data cannot be recovered.
Where should downstream manufacturers go?
The increase in the price of flash memory has made the original manufacturers earn enough money. It has also made some of the cottage manufacturers make a fortune, and the second-tier manufacturers sandwiched between the two are miserable.
The original factory has a strong technology and R&D strength. Although the product price is slightly higher, consumers are happy to accept it; the manufacturer's product cost is extremely low, and the selling price is also very low. If the SSD market does not understand the friends, it is easy to be fooled into buying such products. product. However, the price of some secondary manufacturers' products is constrained by the original factory, and the cost remains high, but the market demand is bleak. They have to sell products at a lower cost than the price (that is, prices are upside down). They can only watch the counterfeit products sold by the manufacturers in disregard of the industry's influence. Earn special profits, have to say that is a sad SSD market.
A cottage 60GB SSD is only 165 yuan
From the four perspectives of industry-level design capabilities, core chip hardware R&D capabilities, operating system software technology capabilities, and assembly sales capabilities, the downstream, especially localization storage vendors, are the most indispensable in terms of assembly sales capacity, but there are few Core software and hardware R & D strength.
Only a few product lines have begun to experiment with the independent development of memory chips. Even with China's Ziguang Group as the head, the Yangtze River’s storage, with a total investment of 160 billion yuan, is only a change from zero to good.
Therefore, if the problem of technical monopoly is not completely solved, then the downstream manufacturers will still be subject to people, and it is difficult to guarantee even the revenue, and it is impossible to talk about "technological innovation."
Finally, in terms of storage software, downstream vendors also need to be more attentive, and how to improve the control of hardware is a top priority. Why is the original factory faster and more stable with the same flash memory particles? How to open up the gap with the manufacturer's disassembled particles? This is where the downstream manufacturers need to work hard. Of course, this software is not designed but tested through the market. This needs to withstand the long-term practice of consumer users.
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