SK Hynix plans to strengthen their technology by stopping the production of 36 layers and 48 layers of 3D NAND Flash
The financial report of SK Hynix in the first quarter of this year is as same as originally expected, due to the impact of the memory market; the revenue and profits of SK Hynix plummeted. Therefore, SK Hynix is ready to strengthen technology and adjust production lines to cope with the market. It is predicted that the production of NAND flash is expected to fall by more than 10% this year comparing with last year.
The average sales price of DRAM fell 27% and shipments fell 8% comparing with the previous quarter due to the slowing demand and conservative purchases by customers. NAND flash memory is affected by inventory pressure, peer competition, the average sales price (ASP) fell 32%, and the shipments fell 6%.
As the new smartphones widely adopts 12GB high-capacity DRAM, also the server device has gradually increased the demands of DRAM. SK Hynix expects that the demand for DRAM will be improved in the second quarter of 2019. On the other hand, when reaching the end of second quarter, the market demand is expected to recover step by step and NAND flash memory demand will begin to increase. At present, the price of NAND flash memory has fallen for more than one year, and the demand for NAND flash by IT industry is also growing rapidly. In the future, SK Hynix will expand the proportion of SSD (solid state hard drive) applications.
Strengthening Technology Development to deal with the decline of memory Market.
In the future, SK Hynix will focus on DRAM field, and they are going to attach more attention to the subtle projects. First of all, the production of the first generation of 10 nm (1x) will be gradually expanded, and from the second half of the year, the main products will be converted to the second generation of 10 nm (1Y) products. At the same time, in order to support the high amount of DRAM demand for the new server chip, 64GB module products will be supplied.
In the field of NAND Flash, SK Hynix will focus on improving earnings in the future. The production of 3D NAND initial products-2 generations (36 layers) and 3 generations (48 layers) will be stopped due to the high cost, and the production proportion of 72 layers will be increased. In the second half of the year, it is planned to use 96-tier 3D NAND products to stimulate the SSD and mobile markets. Considering the current demand, the Qingzhou new M15 plant will slow down their production, the plan of mass production is slower than original schedule, and SK Hynix is expected to reduce its NAND wafer input by more than 10% this year comparing with last year.
SK Hynix announced, "We will focus on lowing costs and ensuring the quality as if the demands of memory products are unstable and the NAND flash market is still under recovery. "