Samsung will post an operating profit of around 7.7 trillion Korean won (US$6.44 billion). That's higher than the 6.6 trillion won (US$5.5 billion) profit Samsung made in the second quarter, but it's also down 56 percent from the same period in 2018 when the company made 17.57 trillion won (US$14.7 billion) in profit.

Note that Samsung makes enormous profits on NAND and DRAM (on good years they made 6-10x profit compared to cost to manufacture).

Samsung will do 300 layers NAND, but do not expect them to lower prices

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing 250-gigabyte (GB) SATA solid state drive (SSD) that integrates the company’s sixth-generation (1xx-layer) 256-gigabit (Gb) three-bit V-NAND for global PC OEMs. By launching a new generation of V-NAND in just 13 months, Samsung has reduced the mass production cycle by four months while securing the industry’s highest performance, power efficiency and manufacturing productivity.

“By bringing cutting-edge 3D memory technology to volume production, we are able to introduce timely memory lineups that significantly raise the bar for speed and power efficiency,” said Kye Hyun Kyung, executive vice president of Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. “With faster development cycles for next-generation V-NAND products, we plan to rapidly expand the markets for our high-speed, high-capacity 512Gb V-NAND-based solutions.”

The Only Single-stack 3D Memory Die With a 100+ Layer Design

Samsung’s sixth-generation V-NAND features the industry’s fastest data transfer rate, capitalizing on the company’s distinct manufacturing edge that is taking 3D memory to new heights.

Utilizing Samsung’s unique ‘channel hole etching’ technology, the new V-NAND adds around 40-percent more cells to the previous 9x-layer single-stack structure. This is achieved by building an electrically conductive mold stack comprised of 136 layers, then vertically piercing cylindrical holes from top to bottom, creating uniform 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells.

As the mold stack in each cell area increases in height, NAND flash chips tend to become more vulnerable to errors and read latencies. To overcome such limitations, Samsung has incorporated a speed-optimized circuit design that allows it to achieve the fastest data transfer speed, at below 450 microseconds (μs) for write operations and below 45μs for reads. Compared to the previous generation, this represents a more than 10-percent improvement in performance, while power consumption is reduced by more than 15 percent.

Thanks to this speed-optimized design, Samsung will be able to offer next-generation V-NAND solutions with over 300 layers simply by mounting three of the current stacks, without compromising chip performance or reliability.

In addition, the number of channel holes required to create a 256Gb chip density has decreased to 670 million holes from over 930 million with the previous generation, enabling reduced chip sizes and less process steps. This brings a more than 20-percent improvement in manufacturing productivity.

Leveraging the high-speed and low-power features, Samsung plans to not only broaden the reach of its 3D V-NAND into areas like next-generation mobile devices and enterprise servers, but also into the automotive market where high reliability is extremely critical.

Following today’s introduction of the 250GB SSD, Samsung plans to offer 512Gb three-bit V-NAND SSD and eUFS in the second half of this year. The company also expects to expand production of higher-speed and greater-capacity sixth-generation V-NAND solutions at its Pyeongtaek (Korea) campus starting next year to better meet demand from global customers.

Cartel want to fight back

NAND flash prices are expected to rebound in the near future, as Samsung Electronics is reportedly considering raising its quotes by as much as 10% and other peer makers including Micron Technology may follow suit.

And stuff started happening

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) announced that on Saturday, June 15, an unexpected power outage occurred in the Yokkaichi region in Japan, affecting production operations at the flash fabrication facilities operated by the company's joint venture partner, Toshiba Memory Corporation. The power outage impacted both the facilities and process tools and Western Digital is working closely with its joint venture partner to bring the facilities back to normal operational status as quickly as possible.

Western Digital continues to assess the impact of this event. The company currently expects the incident will result in a reduction of Western Digital's flash wafer availability of approximately 6 exabytes, the majority of which is expected to be contained in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020.

Cheap PCIE SSDs price matched SATA ones

Average contract prices for 512GB and 1TB SSDs will likely fall below US$0.10 per GB and reach their record-low levels by the end of 2019.

Average contract prices for SATA SSDs are expected to fall 15-26% sequentially in the second quarter, while those for PCIe SSDs will see a larger 16-37% drop.

This change will cause 512GB SSDs to replace their 128GB counterparts and become market mainstream, second only to 256GB SSDs

PCIe SSDs are expected to achieve 50% market penetration, since PCIe SSDs and SATA SSDS are nearly identical in price.

SK Hynix saw its DRAM bit shipments and ASPs decrease 8% and 27%. So guys already cut shipments silently for DRAM.

For NAND - the company's total NAND wafer produced this year is expected to be more than 10% lower than the 2018 level, SK Hynix.

It is just one big criminal cartel.

Revenues of the global NAND flash industry declined 16.8% sequentially to US$14.16 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, but still hit a record high of US$63.2 billion in the whole year.

"We expect NAND prices to continue falling through 2019, which will drive meaningful increase in client SSD adoption in PCs starting in the middle of this year," Kou noted. Such positive development resulting from the chip price fall "does not happen immediately," .

Citi expects NAND pricing to fall 45% in 2019 while DRAM falls 30% and doesn't see a bottom in pricing until Q2 at the earliest.

Chinese are coming

China's Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC) started delivering samples of its 64-layer 3D NAND chip with volume production in the third quarter of 2019. The company also plans to move directly to the 128-layer generation with volume production scheduled for 2020.

YMTC has no plans to provide 96-layer 3D NAND chips as the company intends to skip the generation and jump directly to 128 layers.

NAND flash contract prices are likely to fall by a larger-than-expected 10-15% sequentially in the third quarter and another 15% in the fourth.

Chip suppliers continue to scale up their output thanks to further improvement in their 64- and 72-layer 3D NAND flash technologies. Hence NAND flash contract prices already fell for the second consecutive quarter in the second quarter of 2018. Chip suppliers may cut further their quotes in order to stimulate demand, which will lead to a steeper-than-expected decline in NAND flash contract prices for the third quarter,