NAND flash contract prices in the second half of April continued a downward trend that had started at the beginning of the year. The trend implies that buyers in China did not actively engage in inventory replenishment prior to China's Labor Day holidays, and overall end-market demand has not picked up.

The industry was hoping orders from China would increase due to the May Day holiday, according to sources at NAND flash device makers. However, no strong demand appeared to help revive the low pricing, said the sources.

The industry now hopes NAND flash prices to finally stop falling when the market for embedded applications such as solid-state drives (SSD), eMMC and mSATA takes off, the sources indicated. Those devices demand high-capacity NAND memory.

In contrast, the market for memory cards and drives is already quite saturated and has little room for further growth, the sources pointed out.

Current price falls of NAND flash have lasted for 4-6 months, commented Phison Electronics, a Taiwan-based supplier of memory controller ICs. In China, weak demand is still discouraging procurement, Phison observed.