Further scarcity: World leaders allegedly reduce NAND flash production
The memory giants Samsung and SK Hynix could expose fewer NAND flash wafers in 2026 than before. This could exacerbate the shortage.
(Image: Andreas Wodrich / heise medien)
The two largest memory manufacturers in the world, Samsung and SK Hynix, may produce fewer NAND flash chips in 2026 than in 2025. This is according to a report by market researcher Omdia, which Chosun Biz from South Korea quotes. Omdia itself is considered a recognized source among semiconductor manufacturers. In the worst case, this could lead to a shortage of available memory for SSDs, which in turn would cause price increases.
According to the report, Samsung might only produce just under 4.7 million silicon wafers with NAND flash chips for SSDs in 2026, down from 4.9 million. This would represent a decrease of just over four percent. For SK Hynix, 1.7 million wafers are being considered instead of 1.9 million, a drop of just over ten percent.
Possible reasons
Chosun Biz reports analyst opinions suggesting that the two manufacturers want to increase the margins for SSD products. Due to high demand in data centers, NAND flash has become scarcer, but not nearly as much as DRAM for RAM. While DDR5 kits have become three times pricier or more in recent weeks, SSDs are still seeing an increase of 80 to 100 percent.
A reduction in wafer production could also be technically motivated, for example, if manufacturers switch product lines to newer technology. During this process, the machines are temporarily idle. When switching from Triple-Level Cell (TLC) chips, which store three bits per cell, to four-bit variants (Quadruple Level Cells, QLC), the amount of storage produced could even increase despite a lower number of chips. A component of similar size would then store one-third more data. QLC storage is in high demand, especially in data centers. TLC variants are predominant in consumer SSDs.
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It is also conceivable that Samsung and SK Hynix might switch some NAND flash production lines to the particularly scarce DRAM. However, it takes months for such changes to take effect. Typically, a wafer alone requires two to four months in production to go through the necessary thousands of process steps.
Meanwhile, the numbers are not set in stone. Rather, the calculations of the major memory manufacturers fluctuate. Blocks & Files notes that Samsung and SK Hynix reduced their production less in 2025 than originally forecast by Omdia.
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