Which NAND Is Rising? Enterprise SSDs Climb, eMMC/UFS Gains Slow
TrendForce's 2026 outlooks keep enterprise SSD prices on an upward trend. eMMC and UFS went from the tightest supply of any NAND segment to relatively more abundant one quarter later. A NAND price headline needs a product before it means anything.
本文另有中文版：「NAND 漲價」漲哪一類？企業級 SSD 續漲，eMMC/UFS 漲勢放緩
On Sept. 21, TrendForce said U.S. cloud providers had raised their enterprise SSD demand forecasts within the previous two weeks.
In July, the same firm’s outlook for the third quarter described a different product. Supply of eMMC and UFS, the storage TrendForce ties to smartphones, automotive and industrial use, had become relatively more abundant, and suppliers’ pricing power had weakened. In March, TrendForce had called it the segment with the tightest supply gap of all.
These are different products that share overlapping process capacity.
So “NAND prices are rising” is not one statement. Across TrendForce’s releases from March to September, enterprise SSDs stay on the strong side. eMMC and UFS loosen from one quarterly outlook to the next. The forecast for NAND as a whole slows from 70–75% to 10–15%.
eMMC and UFS: the tightest supply in March, relatively more abundant by July
TrendForce’s Mar. 31 outlook for the second quarter said eMMC and UFS had “the tightest supply gap across all product segments”, and it expected prices to rise sharply. Demand was holding up. Flagship phones with AI features still needed fast transmission even though the smartphone market was weak, and automotive and industrial demand had recovered modestly. On the supply side, eMMC/UFS shares overlapping process capacity with enterprise SSDs but earns significantly lower margins.
The Jul. 3 outlook for the third quarter described the segment differently. Only flagship phones would keep driving UFS 4.0 upgrades in the second half, and buying for mid-range and entry-level models stayed subdued. As overall demand weakened, eMMC and UFS supply, previously very tight, had become relatively more abundant. OEMs were less willing to absorb higher costs and end-market demand was softer. TrendForce said both had weakened suppliers’ pricing power.
Prices were still expected to rise, by more modest amounts.
Enterprise SSDs got more capacity through July, then stronger demand in September
The March release said NAND capacity was increasingly allocated to enterprise SSDs. Orders showed no signs of slowing, and TrendForce expected a clear shortage in 2026, with meaningful capacity expansion unlikely until late 2027 or 2028. Cloud providers, it said, were willing to accept higher prices and sign long-term agreements (LTAs).
The July release used similar language: NAND vendors were allocating more capacity to enterprise SSDs. It also added a limit. Shortages of internally sourced DRAM continued to constrain small-capacity, high-performance enterprise SSDs, and that kept overall prices on an upward trajectory.
September moved from capacity to demand. U.S. cloud providers raised their forecasts because they were speeding up deployments and using enterprise SSDs in more applications. The increase was not limited to high-performance TLC drives. QLC products, which TrendForce credits with superior cost efficiency and capacity, had become a significant growth catalyst.
Recent procurement momentum, TrendForce said, suggested that fourth-quarter orders “could surpass the already elevated levels seen in 3Q26”. That is a possibility, not a booked order. TrendForce added that the momentum had given suppliers greater control over capacity allocation and pricing in the enterprise segment.
In North America, agentic AI; in China, KV cache offloading
The September release also says where the demand comes from. TrendForce says enterprise SSD demand has widened beyond the early focus on training large language models toward more concrete AI applications, and it describes North America and China separately.
For North America, TrendForce points to agentic AI. As those systems spread, it says, demand for large volumes of real-time data retrieval and caching is growing quickly. QLC storage is also seeing broader adoption in vector databases, where high capacity and cost efficiency suit large volumes of unstructured data. TrendForce expects wider adoption of agentic AI to further increase QLC enterprise SSD penetration across North American cloud and data center applications.
For China, TrendForce points to AI architectures led by DeepSeek. They use high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs for KV cache offloading, which means selectively moving cached data out of memory and onto those drives. TrendForce says this can improve inference efficiency at a lower cost, and it adds that the approach could drive broader adoption of QLC enterprise SSDs in China.
KV cache offloading appears in the release only for China. For North America, the named uses are retrieval, caching and vector databases.
The forecast increase fell from 70–75% to 10–15%, and it still points up
The Mar. 31 release forecast NAND contract prices up 70–75% quarter over quarter in 2Q26. The Jul. 3 release forecast 10–15% for 3Q26, which it called “a noticeably slower pace than in previous quarters”. TrendForce put the slowdown on consumer buyers. With contract prices at record highs, it wrote, their price tolerance had reached its limit.
Slower is not lower.
The 10–15% is also an average for NAND overall, not a number for enterprise SSDs. For that segment, the July release says only that prices stay on an upward trajectory, and the September release says the same for 4Q26 without a percentage. Enterprise SSDs get their own figures in the Aug. 25 release. TrendForce says their prices rose around 35% in 2H25 and projects a cumulative rise of 235% in 2026.
TrendForce sees cloud capex up 98% in 2026, and it names two brakes
The Aug. 25 release projects total capital spending by major cloud providers rising 98% in 2026 and another 50% in 2027. It estimates that DRAM and NAND flash combined will account for 47% of that spending in 2026 and 68% in 2027. The sharp rise in memory contract prices since the second half of 2025, it says, has already pushed memory’s share of cloud spending significantly higher.
Two brakes appear in the same release.
First, some LTAs signed from 2Q26 onward include price ceilings that could limit further increases. Second, cloud providers could optimize their AI system memory more aggressively by reducing the memory capacity in each system, to ease high DRAM and NAND costs or limited supply allocations.
The next NAND price headline needs one question first
The question is which product the headline is about.
If it concerns enterprise SSDs, TrendForce’s September wording supports an upward trend and a possible order increase in the fourth quarter. If it concerns NAND contract prices overall, the latest forecast in this set is 10–15% for 3Q26. If it concerns eMMC or UFS, the latest wording is from July, which describes supply as relatively more abundant and increases as more modest.
The three releases at a glance
| Product | Mar. 31 release (2Q26 outlook) | Jul. 3 release (3Q26 outlook) | Sept. 21 release (4Q26, enterprise SSD only) |
|---|---|---|---|
| All NAND, contract price | Forecast up 70–75% QoQ | Forecast up 10–15% QoQ | No overall figure; enterprise SSD prices seen continuing upward |
| Enterprise SSD | Capacity increasingly allocated to it; orders not slowing | More capacity allocated to it; prices on an upward trajectory | 4Q26 orders could exceed 3Q26 |
| eMMC/UFS | Supply gap tighter than in any other segment; prices seen rising sharply | Supply became relatively more abundant; supplier pricing power weakened; increases were more modest | Not covered |
Scope and versions
Every figure here is a TrendForce forecast or estimate, not a realized transaction price. The 47% and 68% shares cover DRAM and NAND together, not NAND alone. The 235% is a cumulative rise for 2026, not an annual growth rate.
The two eMMC/UFS descriptions come from outlooks for different quarters, the second and the third. The September release does not mention eMMC or UFS, so the July wording is the latest in this set.
TrendForce’s Sept. 23 DRAM Market Bulletin is a paid report. Its one-line public summary says TrendForce lifted its 4Q26 DRAM contract-price outlook, but it gives no percentage and says nothing about NAND.
This is the first article in the memory series. The next one turns to consumer electronics, the customers whose price tolerance TrendForce says had reached its limit by July.
This article summarizes published statistics, press releases and news reports, with forecasts labeled apart from reported figures. It is not investment advice.