DRAM prices rally as supply gets tighter

Nanya warns of instability until third quarter

DRAM prices will rally through-out the second quarter of 2017 and finally sort themselves out in the third quarter.

Nanya Technology president Pei-Ing Lee said that most of the pricing issues were due to tight supply.

He said that global DRAM supply will continue to fall slightly short of demand in the second quarter, and DRAM ASPs will rise in both the first and second quarters. He expects DRAM prices to become less volatile starting the third quarter.

Overall market conditions during the second half of 2017 will depend very much on major chip vendors’ capex plans for DRAM

Nanya is set to move a newer 20nm process to risk production at the end of the first quarter. The company expects to start making chips built using the most-advanced technology between the end of the second quarter and the beginning of the third quarter.

Nanya will make 30,000 12-inch wafers manufactured using 20nm process technology monthly in the first quarter of 2018, Lee said. Nanya’s 30nm process output will reduce to 30,000 units monthly.