2024 - Memory Market Boom - Is the Upswing going to carry All Markets?

Memory Market Boom - Is the Upswing going to carry All Markets?

Will the shift to a tariff economy bring out a Golden Age or will it throw us into a Recession?  

 2024 was a year of being caught in the AI hype cycle for Flash and DRAM as well as some Non Volatile Memory. As the infatuation with AI deep learning of ChatGPT grew the Magnificent Seven in particular Nvidia, carried the memory markets to new heights of rebound. While the 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 third 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 DRAM were caught in a boom cycle while the other Non-Volatile Memories were still in a bust cycle with oversupply reducing prices and deteriorated revenues. So, the larger Flash and DRAM memories carried the economy, while OTP ROM, EEPROM, and NVRAM lost demand and trailed behind.

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. Towards the second half of 2024, the infatuation with Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT lost some of its luster as the China-based DeepSeek showed the market that LLMs could run on way less processing power, memory and cost. Nvidia took a hit with its market valuation, but it is still the leader despite the wind being taken out of its sails.

With the growth of the AI economy led by DRAM and to a lesser extent for Flash, the markets entered a boom cycle with Flash revenues around $69 billion, an increase of 77.3% from 2023. DRAM revenues grew 82.6% from $51.945 billion in 2023 to $94.860 billion in 2024.  Flash revenues have increased over $30 billion since 2023. The 2024 NAND Flash market followed suit gaining 81.8% on $66.664 billion, while the NOR market also gained from 2023 by 14.6 % to $2.88 billion. Samsung, again repeated as the 2024 revenue market leader for all NV Memories and NAND. Winbond claimed the NOR Flash leadership position who also held onto the serial NOR leadership position. STMicro held onto the number one position in EEPROM, Infineon (Cypress) remained the NVRAM market leader.