In December, the price increase of the subdivision category NOR Flash in the memory chip is beginning to show. Wang Hong and Acer International have recently reported that they will increase the NOR Flash offer by 5-10% in the first quarter of 2022, while peer Huabang hopes to maintain the offer.
Sources said that as suppliers expand production only through capacity allocation and eliminating manufacturing bottlenecks, the supply of NOR Flash is expected to remain limited for the whole of next year.
On the other hand, the market prospect of NOR Flash for automotive electronics, industrial Internet of things and 5G base stations is good. Wu Minqiu, chairman of Wang Hong, said recently that AI, Edge Computing, 5G and Automotive Electronics will drive the torrent of big data, and the demand for memory chips will continue to expand. This kind of memory chip is NOR Flash, NAND Flash.
The latest application field of NOR Flash is automobile. It is understood that as small as the car camera, to the advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) will have a certain amount of demand for NOR Flash, especially the development of self-driving. From ordinary cars, semi-self-driving to fully self-driving cars, the number of in-car cameras has increased from four to six, NOR Flash use has also doubled.
However, Morgan Stanley recently issued a research report warning that the, NOR Flash industry cycle will peak in the fourth quarter of this year. As the gap between supply and demand in the market is narrowing, buyers and sellers have analyzed the price of NOR Flash in the first quarter of next year, and the final offer may not rise but fall:
Given the strong demand and relatively insufficient supply of high-density NOR Flash for vehicles, suppliers are trying to raise the price of NOR Flash for cars in the first quarter of next year, while, NOR Flash inventories are seen by chip buyers as healthy, with prices up more than 50 per cent from two years ago.
The agency further said that the share prices of, NOR Flash chip giants Wang Hong and Huabang over the past two months have reflected market expectations of higher NOR Flash prices in the first quarter of next year. It is understood that the shares of the two companies have risen more than 25% and 37% respectively since their October lows.
Prior to this, it was Morgan Stanley who took the lead in shouting out the slogan of "winter is coming" in the memory chip industry, believing that the relationship between supply and demand of NAND and NOR Flash is healthier than DRAM, but it may fall next year.
At present, the innovative 55nm advanced process process SPI NOR Flash of Zhaoyi has been in mass production, the 2G large-capacity products of GD55 have passed the AEC-Q100 certification of car regulations, the 2Mb-2Gb capacity of, SPI NOR Flash-grade products has been fully paved; the 48nm NOR Flash independently designed and developed by Dongxin has achieved a technological breakthrough in domestic flash memory chips; and Pran has a complete range of small and medium-capacity NOR Flash, which is continuing to increase investment in large-capacity NOR research and development.
