TrendForce Jibang Consulting: The NAND Flash supply shortage pattern is expected to ease in the second half of 2027

The Zhitong Finance App learned that according to TrendForce Jibang Consulting's latest monthly NAND Flash data analysis for July 2026, AI demand exploded in 2026, and the limited increase in NAND Flash production capacity, and the market showed a shortage of supply. Looking ahead to 2027, demand from servers will continue to be strong. With suppliers upgrading processes, the overall supply level growth rate is not slowing down, and the consumer electronics market is still sluggish, it is estimated that the tight supply situation for NAND Flash is expected to improve in the second half of 2027.

TrendForce Jibang Consulting said that in 2026, due to limited space in the existing plant and the strategy of prioritizing increasing DRAM production capacity, suppliers will mainly meet the market demand for NAND Flash through process upgrades. The challenge of tight plant space in 2027 still exists. It is expected that Korean, American, and Japanese operators will continue to upgrade existing processes or expand the production scale of some factories to increase market supply; Chinese operators will increase production capacity significantly as new production equipment is introduced one after another, and their share of overall NAND Flash bit output will also increase to nearly 19%.

Looking at the demand side, shipments of Intel (Intel) and AMD (Chaowei) next-generation platforms in the second half of 2026 are estimated to drive an annual increase of 17% in server shipments throughout the year. With the launch of Agentic AI applications in 2027, the market demand for general-purpose server construction will not decrease; in addition, the bottleneck of server CPUs will improve significantly compared to 2026, and the supply of memory materials will also stabilize due to long-term agreements (LTA). It is expected that the overall annual increase in server shipments will expand further in 2027.

Compared to the strong performance of the server side, the traction momentum of smartphones and notebooks continues to decline. TrendForce Jibang Consulting estimates that smartphone production will drop 15% to 20% year on year in 2026. In 2027, due to factors such as limited overall terminal recovery and increased consumer price sensitivity, even if high-end models introduce AI to support some demand, the annual production volume will maintain an annual decline trend, but the magnitude will subside. In the notebook sector, after shipments will be reduced by about 10% per year in 2026, it is expected that 2027 will still be affected by the high cost of components such as memory and CPUs, and shipments will decline slightly.

TrendForce Jibang Consulting pointed out that even though servers currently account for more than 40% of NAND Flash bit demand, smartphones and notebooks still account for nearly 40% of total demand, and still have a key influence on overall demand. Judging from the inventory structure, the water level of the original factory is still low. Although the module manufacturer's inventory has risen due to the continued slump in the consumer market, the inventory of other buyers is still within a manageable range. Based on the above analysis, it is estimated that the gap between NAND Flash supply and demand levels will fall between -4% and -5% in 2026, showing a pattern of out of stock. By the second half of 2027, the gap between the two is expected to turn positive, and the tight supply pressure is expected to ease.