Monday, December 1st 2025
NAND Flash Wafer Supply Tightens Further, Some Products See Over 60% Contract Price Hikes in November
TrendForce's latest research shows that demand for NAND Flash stayed strong in November 2025, fueled by AI applications and solid enterprise SSD orders. Meanwhile, suppliers continued to focus on capacity for high-margin enterprise and premium products, while old-node capacity was quickly phased out.
This led to a further tightening of wafer supply, causing November contract prices for mainstream wafers to rise sharply. Monthly average price increases varied from 20% to over 60% across all product categories, with the surge quickly expanding to all density segments.
A detailed analysis of November's pricing trends reveals that 1 Tb TLC experienced the most significant shortage due to persistent enterprise SSD demand, causing a sharp increase in average prices. The 512 Gb TLC, affected by the faster phase-out of legacy nodes and sustained market demand, saw the largest price hike among all TLC products, rising over 65% MoM. Additionally, the 256 Gb TLC continued to see substantial price growth as supply shortages re-emerged after further legacy-node shutdowns.
The QLC supply chain became much tighter thanks to strong demand for high-capacity enterprise products and increasing shipments for cold-storage applications, with 1 Tb QLC experiencing significant price hikes in November. MLC products also continued to see rising ASPs, supported by steady demand in industrial control and consumer markets.
TrendForce reports that suppliers currently have significant pricing power, and wafer-level supply shortages are unlikely to improve soon. Consequently, contract prices are projected to keep rising in December.
Source:
TrendForce
This led to a further tightening of wafer supply, causing November contract prices for mainstream wafers to rise sharply. Monthly average price increases varied from 20% to over 60% across all product categories, with the surge quickly expanding to all density segments.
The QLC supply chain became much tighter thanks to strong demand for high-capacity enterprise products and increasing shipments for cold-storage applications, with 1 Tb QLC experiencing significant price hikes in November. MLC products also continued to see rising ASPs, supported by steady demand in industrial control and consumer markets.
TrendForce reports that suppliers currently have significant pricing power, and wafer-level supply shortages are unlikely to improve soon. Consequently, contract prices are projected to keep rising in December.
13 Comments on NAND Flash Wafer Supply Tightens Further, Some Products See Over 60% Contract Price Hikes in November
It takes years to get zoning permission and actually build power plants in the power ranges needed.
Demand will plummet
The US economy is kept afloat only by data centre investment at this point. Stalling it would be suicide. Europe needs this sovereignty thing to manifest and they know that. The rest of the world ranges from "we don't care" to "we've got the money / extremely low to non-existent regulatory overhead so that's a non-issue."
Unless this bubble pops, the world will just keep digging itself deeper into this hole.
Laws like GDPR/APPI/CCPA/PIPA... prevent companies like google/open ai/... from hosting services in those nations for markets that in theory could afford to pay for them.
in my eyes it really isn't as far fetched to reign in the rate of expansion.
Yeah, currently the US won't be doing anything rational, but they are at the feasible location limit anyway
I sit on several previous in use 120GB and 256GB SATA SSDs. I could virtuallly make bigger drives and use them. No issue at all.+
When 1TB NVME PCIE 4 with 4 Lanes with dedicated dram comes closer to the 150€ purchase price i paid for, I will sell those drives.
84€, 90€ that is far too cheap when i take as base price 150€ for pcie 4 with 4 lanes and dedicated dram.
See yourself please: geizhals.at/?cat=hdssd&xf=7139_>=960GB~7140_<=1.024TB~7177_M.2 2280~7525_M.2 (PCIe)~8232_ja&offset=0&sort=p&promode=true
Samsung 990 pro 1tB - that is for sure a mediocre drive goes for 105€
NVME are cheap these days
2TB
SBN850X amazon.at (basically amazon.de) 2TB - decent drive with maybe firmware flaws - gors for 152€ - very cheap
see yourself please: geizhals.at/?cat=hdssd&xf=7139_>=1.92TB~7140_<=2.048TB~7177_M.2 2280~7525_M.2 (PCIe)~8232_ja&offset=0&sort=p&promode=true
Really wish I would've picked up two last year instead of just one when I had the opportunity to buy them at a great price.
Meanwhile people who do need ram or and flash for something other than LLMs... Get screwed as the price is up hundreds of percent.
The bust out from this is going to be simply incredible. Eventually, they'll be a lot of hardware being sold for pennies on the dollar or it could even end up in landfill.
Memory prices are also insane 60-70% increase is more norm than exception.
HDD's it's no better 40% price increase is pretty normal.
So why you say it's OK baffles me this is all because of "scarsity" they create themselves.