Toshiba decided to shut down the production for 3-6 weeks to deal with the hacking, but production has now returned to normal, said the sources, adding that the suspension resulted in reduced NAND flash production nearly 100,000 wafers.
The world's NAND flash market was supposed to see improvements to the undersupply situation starting the fourth quarter, but the Toshiba fab shutdown has now created uncertainties, the sources indicated.
Demand for NAND flash chips has been driven by an increase in the average memory content in smartphones and server market growth, while growth in the supply has been constrained by chipmakers' slower-than-expected transition to 3D technology. The global supply of NAND flash memory fell short of demand in the latter half of 2016, and has remained tight since.
Nevertheless, end-market demand is actually not as strong as expected, and the NAND flash price rally has gone out of proportion, unable to reflect the real market demand, the sources said. Channel distributors have become reluctant to place orders as the consumption of end-market devices, such as SSDs, is being discouraged by their high prices. The price hikes already started to show adverse impact on demand at the end of the second quarter, the sources noted.
Many downstream distributors originally believed that NAND flash prices had been inflating excessively and would see correction starting the fourth quarter of 2017, according to the sources. However, with the Toshiba incident, such a price correction may not occur.
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toshiba has denied this.. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/17/toshiba-smacks-down-down-ransomware-killed-flash-factory-report/
EDIT: original link has changed, for whatever reason.
EDIT2: ok, that's weird.. the link works fine in the forums, but on the frontpage it doesn't. all the "_" characters get changed to "-" on the frontpage o_O
-andy-