The buzz about rising SSD prices has become a chorus of voices lately – and here comes another report, underscoring the likelihood that solid-state drives will become more expensive soon enough.
German tech site Computer basics (through PC gamer) highlighted a report from The Chosun Daily, a South Korean newspaper, which claimed that Samsung has massively cut production levels for its NAND chips.
These are the modules that make up the actual onboard storage of SSDs, and production levels have likely been halved.
With a production drop of 50%, Samsung’s stock of chips will obviously be a lot smaller in the future. This means that SSD manufacturers will pay more for that NAND, and will of course pass those costs on to consumers in drive prices.
Samsung is the largest player in the NAND market, accounting for around 30% of total sales volume, so this could undoubtedly have a bigger impact.
Furthermore, Computerbase notes that the second largest NAND producer, SK Hynix, plans to follow in Samsung’s footsteps and reduce production in a similar manner. (However, in this case we do not get an exact quantification).
Analysis: rising prices
So is this bad news for consumers? Yes, clearly, with the caveat that we must view each individual report with great taste.
It could be that the South Korean source crossed the wire somewhere, or that the mentioned 50% cut is incorrect (even if the production pullback does indeed happen, it may not be to this extent).
What makes this more likely is that, as we said at the beginning, there is a slew of rumors and predictions from analyst firms that price increases for SSDs are on the way.
Just last month we heard that higher capacity SSDs (2TB and 4TB models) will skyrocket – and that exact term was used by an industry insider in the report that aired. This comes on top of a lot of previous rumors surrounding SSDs becoming more expensive.
At this point, it would be a surprise if the price of solid-state drives, especially the best SSDs out there, doesn’t increase substantially as 2024 progresses. As with any market, there are peaks and valleys, and we can only hope that the price increase we currently seem to be experiencing will level off, and hopefully go in the opposite direction. Of course, that will happen eventually – it’s just a matter of timing, as always.
Either way, if you want to buy one of the best SSDs, it seems increasingly likely that the best move is to buy now rather than wait.