Since the beginning of this year, the supply of flash memory has been sufficient, and the price of SSD has been gradually reduced from the high price of last year. According to industry insiders in the industry chain, Samsung’s capital expenditure on NAND flash memory is expected to be US$6.4 billion this year, and it will increase to US$9 billion in 2019.
These investments were first used to increase the capacity of 3D flash memory, including factories in Pyeongtaek, Korea and Xi'an, China, secondly the research and development for advanced technologies. Last week, Samsung announced mass production of its fifth-generation 3D V-NAND flash memory, with a 96-layer stack and a single Die 32GB capacity. The technology is ahead of the competition for two years.
IC Insights analysis pointed out that Samsung's expansion is only the beginning for the industry. In the next few years, SK Hynix, Micron, Intel, Toshiba, Western Digital/SanDisk, Changjiang Storage all expressed their desire to expand flash memory capacity in the future.
