Bleak Start: NAND Flash Revenue Plunges Nearly a Quarter in Q1 for Top 5 Manufacturers

In a challenging opening quarter, the NAND flash market experienced a significant downturn, according to a new report from TrendForce. The industry faced a perfect storm of factors, including inventory pressures and weakening demand from end customers, leading to a 15% sequential drop in average selling prices (ASPs) and a 7% reduction in shipments during Q1 2025.

While some price recovery was observed towards the end of the quarter, the impact on the top players was substantial.

The combined revenue of the top five NAND Flash suppliers reached $12.02 billion, a near 24% decrease compared to the previous quarter.

Digging deeper, Samsung maintained its leading position in the market, but faced a roughly 25% revenue decline, hitting $4.2 billion, due to sluggish demand in the enterprise SSD segment.

SK Group (including SK Hynix and Solidigm), a major supplier of high-capacity products in 2024, felt the pinch of seasonality and issues related to removing 30TB SSD inventory among clients during Q1, leading to a drop in both shipments and ASPs. Their revenue contracted, reaching $2.19 billion.

Micron saw its revenue dip by about 11% to $2.03 billion, benefiting from increased shipments in the quarter, despite ASP declines. This propelled Micron into the third position for the first time in quarterly revenue rankings.

Kioxia, in the fourth position, also suffered from weaker seasonal demand. Both shipments and ASPs declined which resulted in a $1.92 billion in revenue during Q1.

Following the completion of its split, SanDisk, part of Western Digital, saw its shipments and ASPs experience slight declines in Q1, resulting in revenues reaching $1.7 billion. SanDisk aims to increase shipments of its QLC products in an effort to improve profitability.

Looking ahead to Q2, a rebound is expected. With end-buyers’ inventories gradually returning to healthy levels and NAND Flash prices potentially bottoming out, along with U.S. tariffs encouraging some manufacturers to ramp up procurement, a 10% sequential revenue increase is predicted for brand suppliers in the second quarter.