Earlier this week, Western Digital alerted partners that containments managed to ruin upwards of 6.5 exabytes of storage resulting in 6.5 million terabytes of unusable flash storage.
Western Digital’s partner Kioxia Corp also reported that it also suffered losses due to contaminated materials used in its flash-memory production line. Roughly a year ago, WD and Kioxia announced the fruits of a joint venture to produce their 6th generation 3D flash memory, and this week, the two gathered to potentially halt a resurgence in PC demand by shortening supply.
Between what WD claimed as losses and what Kioxia’s is reporting, the two factories could be responsible for up to 16 exabytes of wasted NAND memory, resulting in a ten percent chunk of the flash market being erased for the quarter.
Despite their acknowledgment of the containments, neither WD or Kioxia have identified the containments nor their plan for getting their Yokkaichi and Kitamakmi plants back up and running at normal operational pace.
What we do know, thanks to a report from Bloomberg, is that,
Kioxia said its newer and more lucrative type of 3D flash was the product line impacted, and “the company does not anticipate that shipment of its conventional 2D NAND flash memory will be affected.”
A Kioxia spokesperson said that only part of 3D Nand production has been hurt. The company will continue to ship from inventory in the short term but shipments will be curtailed in the “near term.»
As manufacturers attempt to navigate an ongoing chip shortage, many will now be hit with yet another supply chain issue for those dependent on WD and Kioxia flash memory such as Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Google, Ford and many others.
With WD and Kioxia adjusting their expectations for the quarter to be down that 16 exabytes or ten percent of the quarterly market consumption for flash memory, research are pointing out the obvious price hikes to come.
“Flash memory prices will rise for sure, further adding fuel to the recent component price hike trend stemming from supply shortages,” said Ace Research Institute analyst Hideki Yasuda.
However, it’s not all bad news on the flash memory front, competitors Samsung, Hynix Inc, and Micron Technology Inc are poised to benefit from WD and Kioxia’s misfortunes as many manufacturers will be looking to supplement their production in the near future.
Shares for both SK Hynix and Micron rose roughly two percent in after-hours trading following WD and Kioxia’s announcement.
While it’s becoming easier for customers to swap out SSDs on Surface devices, many come pre-installed with Toshiba/Kioxia produced flash memory and this week’s news will surely affect the rosy quarterly outlook for its hardware division Microsoft mentioned to investors a couple of weeks ago.
Still waiting for the ability to turn off grouping in the taskbar. If I have three file explorer windows open, I want three separate buttons with labels so I can switch to them individually in one click and know which one is which from a…
Commented on: Windows Insider Dev Channel Could Soon Get Busy
Functionality please. The eye candy is irrelevant to people concentrating on tasks.
Commented on: Windows Insider Dev Channel Could Soon Get Busy
No, it is incorrect. All the features coming to Beta and Release Preview are the features that have been available on Dev channel for months now. What’s your point?
Commented on: No new Windows Insider build again this week
It’s unfortunate that the beta and release preview channels will get features that the dev channel won’t see, due to a restructure in how feature testing is done. It kind of defeats the purpose of the dev channel, and increases the chances of encountering bugs…
Commented on: No new Windows Insider build again this week
Yes, got one today. sigh
Commented on: No new Windows Insider build again this week
