SLC NAND rose 130-150% in 1H26 and TrendForce's headline NAND number still said 10-15%

Summary. On 16 June 2026 TrendForce reported that average SLC NAND contract prices rose an estimated 130-150% during the first half of 2026, and that NOR Flash rose 100-120% over the same period. Eighteen days later, on 3 July 2026, the same firm forecast that NAND Flash contract prices would rise 10-15% QoQ in the third quarter and headlined the release "gains moderate". Both numbers are correct. They describe different markets that share a word. A team pricing an industrial gateway, an automotive ECU or a networking switch off the 10-15% figure is understating its 2026 memory line by roughly five times, and the June note put the 2H26 increases at 70-75% for SLC NAND and 60-65% or more for high-density NOR on top of the first-half rise. Two suppliers also disagree by more than 4x on how many NOR devices sit in an NVIDIA GB200 rack, a firmware-flash line put at up to $600 per NVL72 system. Nobody has reconciled that either.

Two numbers, one label

The gap is not a revision. The 3 July release covers the volume NAND market: client SSDs, enterprise SSDs, eMMC and UFS for handsets, and open-market wafers. That market is dominated by advanced-layer 3D NAND, it is where consumer price resistance bites, and TrendForce says price tolerance among consumer customers "has reached its limit". Hence 10-15%.

The 16 June release covers mature-node code storage: NOR Flash and SLC NAND, the parts that hold boot code, firmware and write-intensive buffers. Suppliers keep moving that capacity to HBM and high-layer 3D NAND, so the supply base shrinks while demand from edge AI, robotics and networking grows. TrendForce says cumulative contract price increases for both categories exceeded 100% in the first half of 2026.

Here is what each number covers.

The compounding matters. A part that rose 140% in the first half and rises another 72% in the second half ends 2026 at roughly 4.1 times its January price. The headline NAND number gets you nowhere near that.

Why the mature-node corner is the one that broke

The cause is capacity allocation, not demand froth. TrendForce's 16 June note says major suppliers "continue to prioritize capacity allocation toward higher-value products such as HBM and advanced-layer 3D NAND", which squeezes the mature-node capacity NOR Flash and SLC NAND depend on. Several international vendors have been exiting low-capacity and mature-node segments outright: TrendForce's 28 April 2026 report on Macronix cites analysts putting Kioxia and Micron as gradually leaving the SLC NAND segment.

That exit is what the remaining suppliers are living off. Macronix president Lu Chih-yuan told an investors' conference on 27 January 2026: "Samsung announced its plans to stop producing and supplying eMMC [NAND flash memory chips]. The impact is huge. That has led to severe shortages in the market." He added that Macronix is the only company capable of producing MLCs used in eMMC outside Samsung, Hynix, Micron and Kioxia.

The replacement capacity is small and late. Macronix committed NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) of capex for 2026, about eleven times the NT$1.8 billion it spent in 2025, to add roughly 10,000 wafers to a 12-inch fab running 20,000 wafers a month. Its total capacity is still effectively capped near 25,000 wafers a month, and Lu said Macronix would delay its 3D NOR development by about two years to fund the expansion. TrendForce's April report notes most new tools arrive only in the first half of 2027 because of industry-wide equipment shortages. Winbond approved record 2026 capex of NT$42.1 billion (US$1.33 billion) against NT$5.5 billion in 2025, targeting NOR and NAND shipment growth of 30-40% year-on-year.

None of that lands in time for a 2026 build. Winbond president James Chen said at the company's 10 February 2026 earnings conference: "Our capacities have been fully booked this year and next year, including DRAM, NOR and NAND. The industry's upcycle should last for quite a long time."

The GB200 rack count nobody has reconciled

Two Taiwanese sources published NOR content figures for the same NVIDIA rack two days apart in February 2026, and they disagree by more than 4x.

Chen, at the 10 February earnings conference, said an AI server rack based on NVIDIA's GB200 chips requires more than 120 NOR flash chips, equal to the consumption of 120 PCs. On 12 February, Blocks & Files reported Taiwan's Commercial Times as saying there can now be up to 30 NOR devices in a GPU server rack, costing up to $600 per NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system, and forecast to reach $900 within a couple of years.

The two figures may be counting different things. A GB200 NVL72 holds 18 compute trays plus switch trays, so "30 devices" plausibly counts discrete boot flash sockets while "more than 120" counts every NOR die including BMC, NIC, PSU and switch firmware. Neither source states its counting rule. If you are modelling firmware-flash exposure in a rack you are buying, treat $600 as a floor and the 120-device count as the ceiling, and ask your ODM for a per-tray bill of materials rather than picking one published number. The real cost is usually the part nobody itemised.

Who this actually hits

The exposure is not evenly spread. Use this to work out whether you are in the 10-15% market or the 70-75% one.

TrendForce is explicit that long-lifecycle automotive and industrial applications face "an elevated risk of prolonged shortages" through the second half, and that industrial-grade and automotive-grade SLC NAND may run above the 70-75% average. Automotive parts carry AEC-Q100 qualification and fixed temperature grades, so a substitution is a requalification, not a purchase order change.

The storage side of the same shortage is easier to see because the prices are public. VDURA's Flash Volatility Index put a 30TB TLC enterprise SSD at $22,600 in August 2026 against $3,460 in the third quarter of 2025, with 30TB QLC at $18,080 against $2,768, while a 30TB HDD went from $495 to $1,216. Erik Salo, SVP of Product and Operations at VDURA, said: "Flash pricing has stopped swinging wildly, but it has settled at a level that breaks the assumptions most all-flash architectures were sold on." The same capacity reallocation drives both. We covered the DRAM side of it in our note on the server DRAM price rise for 3Q26, and the downstream device effect in 2026 price hikes and enterprise fleet budgets.

What to do before the next build

Four things, with dates attached.

Re-price the BOM against the right series. If any line is SLC NAND, NOR Flash or automotive-grade managed NAND, model 2H26 at the 70-75% and 60-65% bands from the 16 June note, not the 10-15% headline. Do it before you commit a 2027 build cost.

Get on a long-term agreement or accept allocation. TrendForce says suppliers are managing through LTAs and selective order acceptance "rather than relying solely on aggressive price increases". Macronix has moved NOR and SLC NAND to monthly price negotiation. A quarterly purchase cadence is now the expensive option.

Cut firmware footprint where it is cheap to do so. Edge AI firmware has grown from tens of megabytes to multiples of that, which is what pushed demand into 256Mb-and-above NOR. Compression, dead-code removal and moving model weights off the boot device to a cheaper managed part are engineering work that pays at these prices.

Requalify a second source now, not when the first one allocates. Winbond and Macronix both offer AEC-Q100-qualified NOR families. Requalification takes months; the capacity is booked through 2027.

The upstream picture does not soften either. TrendForce's 30 June 2026 research puts average 8-inch utilisation across the top ten foundries at 88% in 2026, rising to 90% in the second half, with foundry prices already up 5-15% between the first and second quarters and a further 5-10% for capacity-constrained nodes into the third. It expects mature-node price increases to extend through 2027.

India-specific considerations

Indian electronics manufacturers and product companies sit downstream of every one of these decisions and buy in dollars against a rupee BOM. A component that ends 2026 at four times its January price is a margin event, not a procurement irritation, particularly for the industrial and automotive tiers that India's manufacturing push targets. Two practical notes. First, an LTA signed in dollars removes price risk but not currency risk, so hedge the two separately. Second, if your product ships firmware over the air, a smaller firmware image also cuts data-transfer cost and update failure rates on Indian mobile networks, which makes the footprint work pay twice. Teams building connected plant systems should read this alongside our piece on smart manufacturing with IoT and AI in Indian factories. Where firmware carries personal data, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 obligations attach to what the device stores, not to what it costs.

What is still unknown

TrendForce has not published a 4Q26 SLC NAND or NOR forecast as of 25 August 2026, so the 70-75% band is a half-year estimate rather than a settled quarterly path. The 3 July release does not say whether its 10-15% NAND figure excludes SLC, which is why the two numbers can be read as contradicting each other. Neither Winbond nor Commercial Times has published the counting rule behind the GB200 NOR device figures. And Macronix's automotive eMMC controller samples are targeted for late in the first quarter of 2027, so the substitution route for automotive managed NAND does not exist yet.

What is not in doubt is the direction of supplier capital. The top five NAND vendors turned over $68.87 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a 77% quarterly jump driven by average selling prices rather than volume, and TrendForce notes they are prioritising capital expenditure on DRAM and HBM rather than new NAND capacity. That is the same allocation choice that emptied the mature-node corner in the first place. The cloud and AI capital expenditure question and your firmware flash line are the same story seen from two ends.

FAQ

Why do TrendForce's two NAND numbers disagree?

They cover different products under one label. The 3 July 2026 release forecasts 10-15% QoQ for the volume NAND market of client SSDs, enterprise SSDs, eMMC and UFS. The 16 June release covers mature-node SLC NAND and NOR Flash, which rose 130-150% and 100-120% respectively in the first half of 2026.

How much should I budget for SLC NAND in the second half of 2026?

TrendForce forecasts average SLC NAND contract price increases of 70-75% across 2H26, on top of the 130-150% rise already recorded in 1H26. It adds that industrial-grade and automotive-grade parts may run above that average, so treat 70-75% as a floor rather than a midpoint for those grades.

What is driving the NOR Flash shortage specifically?

Suppliers are moving mature-node capacity to HBM and advanced-layer 3D NAND. At the same time, edge AI has pushed firmware images past tens of megabytes, raising demand for NOR densities of 256Mb and above, and automotive ADAS and cockpit systems need high-density NOR. Supply fell while demand rose.

Will new capacity fix this in 2026?

No. Macronix committed NT$22 billion of 2026 capex to add about 10,000 wafers a month to a 20,000-wafer fab, but TrendForce reports most equipment arrives only in the first half of 2027. Winbond's NT$42.1 billion plan targets 30-40% shipment growth, and its capacity is booked through 2027.

Is my handset or tablet product affected the same way?

Less so. TrendForce's 3 July release says eMMC and UFS supply became relatively more abundant in the third quarter as consumer demand weakened, producing more modest contract price increases. The severe moves are concentrated in industrial, automotive and networking parts rather than volume mobile storage.

How many NOR chips are in an NVIDIA GB200 rack?

Two published figures disagree. Winbond president James Chen said on 10 February 2026 that a GB200-based AI server rack requires more than 120 NOR flash chips. Commercial Times, reported by Blocks & Files on 12 February, put it at up to 30 devices costing up to $600 per NVL72 system. Neither states its counting rule.

What should an engineering team do first?

Re-price every SLC NAND, NOR Flash and automotive-grade managed NAND line against the 70-75% and 60-65% bands rather than the headline figure. Then pursue a long-term supply agreement, because TrendForce reports suppliers now manage demand through LTAs and selective order acceptance instead of price alone.

How eCorpIT can help

Our embedded and platform engineering teams work on the two levers that are still in your control at these prices: shrinking firmware footprint so a smaller NOR or SLC part clears the requirement, and restructuring device software so a second-source component does not force a full requalification. We are CMMI Level 5 and ISO 27001:2022 certified, and we design connected-device systems aligned with DPDP Act 2023 requirements. Ask our embedded engineering team to review your firmware footprint against your 2027 BOM.

References

1. Contract Prices Surged More Than 100% in 1H26; Structural Shortages to Keep NOR Flash and SLC NAND Prices Rising in 2H26, TrendForce, 16 June 2026
2. AI Server Demand Continues to Support Memory Prices in 3Q26, but Gains Moderate, TrendForce, 3 July 2026
3. Winbond planning record capex, Taipei Times, 11 February 2026
4. More storage supply chain pain incoming: Oh no, not NOR too, Blocks & Files, 12 February 2026
5. Macronix NAND Sales Jump 382% YoY on Samsung's MLC Exit, TrendForce News, 28 April 2026
6. Macronix unveils plans to ease 'severe shortages', Taipei Times, 28 January 2026
7. SSD prices still rocketing up faster than disk, Blocks & Files, 11 August 2026
8. Surging NAND demand sends big five's revenue skywards in Q2, Blocks & Files, 19 August 2026
9. Apple's Across-the-Board Price Increases Add Uncertainty to Consumer Demand, TrendForce, 1 July 2026
10. AI Component Capacity Squeeze and Foundry Output Cuts to Extend Mature-Node Price Increases in 2027, TrendForce, 30 June 2026
11. Winbond Electronics Enters Automotive Flash Memory Market, AEC-Q100 grade definitions, Winbond

Last updated: 25 August 2026.