2023 NAND Flash Market Declining Y/Y at 40% on $36.7 Billion

2023 was a year of moderate inflation and major downturn for flash and DRAM as well as some non volatile memory, according to The 2023 Non Volatile Memory Market Shares by Vendor report, CS700MS-2024 ($3,000) by WebFeet Research, Inc.

While the pandemic economy returned to normalcy the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza-Israel overshadowed the European and world economy. As the invasion of Ukraine entered its 2nd year, the battle lines were nearly stalemated. Oil prices stabilized and inflation came down to 3% levels. Over the course of the year the US economy tethered from going into a recession to following the lead of the Magnificent Seven and forging a solid recovery.

Flash and memory were caught in a bust cycle as inflation and highish energy prices wiped out disposable income used for electronics applications. This oversupply reduced prices and deteriorated flash revenues. As the production of flash wafers was cut back to reduce inventory, new demand surfaced in 4Q23 effectively turning the industry around.

The strength of the Magnificent Seven: Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Meta Platforms (Facebook) and Nvidia buoyed the stock market from falling into a recession. Unfortunately, the flash and memory markets didn’t have a savior to keep them out of one of the steepest downturns in semiconductor market history.

In the past, the memory markets being the canary-in-the-coalmine as the harbinger of the economy the DRAM and to a lesser extent for flash, moved into a downturn with flash revenues around $39 billion, a decrease of -39.0% from 2022. DRAM revenues fell -33.2% from $77.762 billion in 2022 to $51.945 billion in 2023.  Flash revenues have dropped over $25 billion since 2022. The 2023 NAND flash market followed suit declining at -39.9% on $36.674 billion, while the NOR market dipped from 2022 by -22.9 % to $2,522 million.

Samsung, like every year, was the 2023 revenue market leader for all NV memories and NAND. Winbond maintained the NOR flash leadership position who also held onto the serial NOR leadership position. STMicro reaffirmed the ≠1 position in EEPROM, Infineon (Cypress) remained the NVRAM market leader.