NAND prices increased by over 32% in 2017, says Trendforce, though there are currently signs of a slowdown in price rises and the possibility of over-supply in the New Year.

There are only four significant suppliers: Samsung, Hynix, Micron/Intel and Toshiba/Western Digital..

Xu went on to mention the possibility of co-ordinated action among the producers to keep prices rising.

The NRDC is concerned about the effect of high NAND prices on China’s fast growing mobile phone industry.

Next year China’s Yangtze River Memory Storagecompany, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, is expected to begin production of 32-layer NAND.