Flash memory continues to go up against the seasonal factor. This is stated in the study DRAMeXchange.

In the second quarter of 2017, the global memory market for NAND flash was $ 13.2 billion, up 8% compared to the previous three months. The contractual cost of these chips increased during this time by about 3-10% depending on the segment, although usually in April-June there is a decline in prices due to seasonality.

In connection with the increase in prices for mobile products and solid-state drives, flash memory manufacturers will record an increase in revenues in the third quarter, and following the results of 2017 the market will show a steady rise, researchers predict.

"Faced with limitations in the production of 2D NAND Flash memory, vendors are successfully moving to the development and production of 3D NAND Flash memory," said Alan Chen, senior research manager at DRAMeXchange,. - However, in this transition period, the industry experienced a significant loss of production capacity. This, in turn, leads to problems with supplies and the growth of contract prices ".

Lack of memory can be observed until the end of 2017. In 2018, the situation should improve when manufacturers widely master the manufacture of 64- and 72-layer 3D NAND flash chips, Chen added..

The largest manufacturer of flash memory remains Samsung Electronics, whose share in the second quarter of 2017 reached 35.6% against 34.4% three months earlier. According to experts, the revenues of the South Korean giant in the market rose by 11.6%, to $ 4.7 billion, thanks to the supply of high-density chips for solid-state drives and a good balance in the product range.

The second place in the list of leading vendors is shared by Toshiba and Western Digital, whose shares were measured in the last quarter by approximately 17.5%.

Toshiba's investments in the production of 3D NAND flash chips are limited by the shortage of funds caused by large write-offs in the nuclear business. The main customer of the corporation is Apple, and the second most important are manufacturers of smartphones and SSD-disks.

Retail revenue of Western Digital from the sale of flash memory has been growing since the acquisition of SanDisk in 2016. In addition, the American company helps to shift the focus from PC clients to customers representing mobile device and retail drive markets.