Western Digital says it has lost at least 6.5 exabytes (6.5 billion gigabytes) of flash storage due to contamination issues at Western Digital’s joint venture partner’s NAND production facilities. As per the law of supply and demand, the contamination could see the price of NAND chip spike up to 10 percent.
The contamination could see the price of NAND — the main component of SSDs — spike up to 10 percent, according to market research firm TrendForce. Any potential NAND shortages or price fluctuations could affect the PC market over the next few months, which had another big year in 2021 despite global chip shortages and demand for GPUs.
The contamination of materials used in the manufacturing processes appears to have been detected in late January at two plants in Japan, with Western Digital’s joint venture partner, Kioxia (previously Toshiba), revealing it has affected BiCS 3D NAND flash memory.
It’s not clear what caused the contamination, whether products on the market will need to be recalled, or when production will resume.
MacDailyNews Take: Ai yi yi.
Western Digital is an Apple supplier. Kioxia NAND chips are used in many Apple products, including the iPhone 13 family, the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, and iPad Pro.
Fortunately, Apple’s margins on storage are, as we all know, fat enough to absorb just about any hit. Cut-rate consumer-grade PC peddlers won’t be so lucky.
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