Third-quarter seasonal effects may not be obvious to the memory module industry in 2011, despite a slight rebound from the second quarter when the sector should have hit its bottom for the year, Adata Technology chairman Simon Chen remarked on May 31.
Sales of modules including flash drives and memory cards in the retail channel segment are expected to pick up starting June after a weak May, said Chen, adding that growth is expected to continue steadily for the rest of the year.
Apple will remain a key buyer of NAND flash in 2011. The vendor actually did not step up its purchases amid concerns arising previously that the March 11 disasters in Japan could cause bottlenecks in the manufacturing of NAND chips, Chen pointed out. The prospects of the NAND flash market in the second half will depend on how healthy demand is.
As for DRAM, buying sentiment remains weak in particular at the spot market, Chen indicated. But partial rebounds are expected to take place in the third quarter, Chen said.
As long as inventory is controlled properly, memory module companies can still generate stable profits in 2011, Chen believes. Overall module market conditions should be more favorable than in 2010, and will go through more modest business-cycle fluctuations.
In other news, Chen revealed that Adata's shipments of solid state drives (SSDs) climbed nearly 200% on year in the first quarter of 2011. The company has also stepped into producing high-end modules used in servers designed for cloud computing.