In a significant move that is set to reverberate across the global storage chip industry, Kioxia, a global NAND flash memory giant, has recently issued a crucial End-of-Life (EOL) notice to its customers worldwide. Following the production halt order for small-capacity TSOP-packaged products in mid-March, Kioxia has further expanded the scope of product withdrawals, officially marking the end of the traditional NAND technology era. This decision not only signifies the conclusion of a 41-year-old storage technology but also promises to reshape the global storage chip market landscape, with far-reaching impacts on downstream industrial control, automotive, embedded systems, and other sectors.
Kioxia's current production halt is not targeted at specific models but involves a comprehensive retirement of an entire outdated technology platform. It encompasses a wide range of 2D NAND and early 64-layer 3D NAND products that were mass-produced between 2009 and 2017. The affected products include traditional floating-gate 2D NAND (covering the full 32nm/24nm/15nm process nodes and multiple storage types such as SLC, MLC, and TLC) and early 64-layer 3D NAND (BiCS Flash Gen3) across all series. The packaging forms affected are diverse, including wafers, BGA, TSOP, eMMC, UFS, and ordinary SD cards.
According to the official statement, the final purchase forecast deadline is set for September 30, 2026, and the last shipment will be made by December 31, 2028. The direct reason cited for this production halt is the constraints on production capacity and substrate supply, which have made it impossible to continue operating the relevant production lines.
Previously, on March 19, Kioxia had already issued the first batch of production halt notices, focusing on low-capacity TSOP-packaged products, specifically 1Gb - 64Gb (equivalent to 128MB - 8GB) SLC/MLC NAND flash memory, with MLC types being the main focus. At that time, the specific time nodes were clearly defined: the last purchase forecast was on May 30, 2026, the last order on September 15, 2026, and the last shipment on December 31, 2027. The background for that production halt was mainly the end of the substrate's lifecycle and continuously shrinking market demand, making production unsustainable.
Kioxia's back-to-back production halt notices in a short period are driven by a combination of technological, cost, and market factors, rather than being a random occurrence. From a technological perspective, as the number of 3D NAND stacking layers continues to break through to over 500 layers, the capacity per wafer far exceeds that of traditional 2D NAND. The gap between traditional technologies in terms of capacity and performance is becoming increasingly apparent, making their phase-out inevitable.
In terms of costs, the maintenance costs of old production lines are soaring, and they cannot share supply chain resources with advanced process production lines. Kioxia needs to concentrate its limited resources, such as wafers and clean rooms, on high-value-added products like BiCS Flash Gen4 and above to compete with peers such as Samsung and SK Hynix.
On the market demand front, the explosion in demand for large-capacity, high-speed read-write storage in data centers during the AI era, along with the shift in the consumer electronics market towards higher-capacity and lower-cost solutions, has further squeezed the survival space of traditional NAND and early 3D NAND.
As the world's second-largest NAND flash memory supplier, Kioxia's production halt will not only cause short-term supply tensions in industrial control, automotive, and other sectors that rely on traditional NAND but also provide a window of opportunity for domestic storage manufacturers to fill the market gap. Moreover, it officially marks the end of the planar NAND era and drives the entire storage industry to accelerate its transition to advanced technologies.
In conclusion, Kioxia's strategic move is a watershed moment in the storage chip industry, ushering in a new era of technological competition and market realignment. As the industry adapts to these changes, stakeholders across the value chain will need to navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
