By Joyce Yang, Marketing Intelligence Team, DRAMeXchange

The still memory prices signified the lukewarm memory market over the week September 13-20. Spot prices fluctuation for all kinds of memory, including DDR, DDR2, SDRAM and NAND flash, is limited within a 2% range. Transactions trend more active amid the coming long holidays in China during early October.

Prices of DDR 256Mb chips from major brands and efficiently tested (eTT) chips both went up last week. Average price of DDR 256Mb 32Mbx8 400MHz grew slightly from US$2.52 to US$2.54 and price of eTT 32Mbx8 grew from US$2.25 to US$2.28.

Some Asian traders and module houses were still dumping their DRAM inventory at the spot market upon the concern of further price downs in early this week. However, after seeing Chinese DRAM orders increase, they also show more interest in buying since September 14.

Prices for DDR 512Mb (64Mbx8) went down from US$5.80 to US$5.71, with the Hynix-made chips plunging more severely. Sources indicated that Hynix has shifted more capacity to DDR 512Mb at the expense of the 256Mb parts.

For the NAND flash market, market players still look for NAND Flash 8Gb products but prices only increased by a slight 0.43% to US$46.99. Although we have heard that Samsung Electronics and Hynix have less supply to spot market recently, the demand seems not strong to support the prices neither.

NAND Flash 4Gb decreased 0.6% to US$23.38, 2Gb decreased 0.65% to US$12.16 and 1Gb decreased 0.14% to US$6.9.

Contract market: Several DIMM premium further diminish, NAND Flash rebounds

Motherboard shipments from Taiwan's top four makers increased 13% MoM in August after the weak shipments in the previous two months. Look forward to September and October, Taiwan motherboard makers and notebook ODMs hold positive, but that does not imply good news to DRAM contract prices. PC OEMs still negotiated the contract prices down because of the increasing DRAM supply. DRAMeXchange summarizes the negotiation results for key DRAM components as follows:

1.DDR 256MB UDIMM and DDR 256MB SODIMM down 2% at $0.5

For some PC OEMs, they have settled DDR 256MB UDIMM and SODIMM prices at same prices but some settled prices with a premium of around $0.5.

2.DDR&DDR2 512MB UDIMM premium narrows down 3%-5%

The premium of DDR 512MB over two 256MB modules eliminated amid more output and success cost-down of DDR 512Mb 64Mbx8 chips production. The 'low' range for DDR2 512MB is now around US$4 lower than the same density DDR DIMM. 'High' ranges of 512MB DDR and DDR2 DIMM, on the other hand, stay identically at US$48.

3.DDR&DDR2 512MB SODIMM down 2%-5% at US$1-$2

As production cost for notebook-use 32Mx16 chips and SODIMM PCB remain higher over desktop-use memory and PCB, SODIMM for notebook still enjoy the 7%-15% premium over the desktop use UDIMM. However, we believe that the premium between these two modules should narrow down further as costs continue to shrink.

Contract prices for NAND Flash rebounds in September with 4Gb part enjoys the largest on month growth of 3.55% while low-density 1Gb part still able to remain its price flat. Contract prices for 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb are quoted at US$42.38, US$22.16, US$11.48 and US$6.41 respectively on September 20.

Prices for both high- and low-range low-density (2Gb and below) trend down, as demand is limited and there is no significant drop in output. Leading players, who aim to grab larger share and slash price to attract more customers, serves as another side factor.

Apple, which books a significant capacity ratio of Samsung Electronics for its new NAND Flash-based nano, also led to a raise for low-range 4Gb part price as Hynix and Toshiba are the only players that able to supply 4Gb chips in noticeable amount at the market.

Predicting the price trend of 4Gb in October, we believe that the price should continue on the rise but the growth rate should be moderate as shipment for Apple nano is not yet gaining its momentum.

Orders from Apple also boosts contract price up for 8Gb picks as Apple stacked four 8Gb NAND Flash chips for the 4GB MP3 players, the solid demand should help maintaining the price strong.