LYON, FRANCE – “Despite the Covid-19 outbreak, which negatively impacted the smartphone and automotive industries but spurred demand for server and PC memory for stay-at-home activities, 2020 is expected to be a year of recovery,” said Simone Bertolazzi, Ph.D., technology and market analyst, Semiconductor, Memory & Computing at Yole Développement. “At Yole, we see the beginning of a new era of prosperity for the memory industry.”

Driven by important megatrends such as mobility, cloud computing, AI and IoT, the standalone memory market has experienced extraordinary growth over the past decade, Yole says. However, this exciting growth period ended in the fourth quarter of 2018 when the NAND and DRAM markets started experiencing oversupply caused by weak demand. This included lower-than-expected smartphone sales and a slowdown in data center demand.

Inventory levels increased for memory suppliers and their OEM customers, with ASP ($/Gb) declining more than 49% in 2019. Meanwhile, combined DRAM and NAND revenue reached ~$106 billion, down 34% from 2018. In 2019, significant DRAM and NAND capex cuts initiated a market recovery that began in late 2019, which has continued in 2020.

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