[Storage Price Hike Brewing] BlockBeats reported on November 11th that several storage industry insiders revealed that some leading companies have verbally informed distributors of their intention to raise prices for enterprise-grade NAND flash memory. While official price increase notices have not yet been issued, prices at the distribution level have already begun to move. Several distributors confirmed these price increase signals. One Hynix distributor stated, "Prices are rising every day." He observed that the price of used hard drives has been consistently increasing, driving up overall prices; the price adjustment process involves provincial distributors adjusting prices weekly, which are then passed down to lower-level distributors, "and we adjust accordingly." However, a Samsung distributor stated that this round of price increases is not a general increase across all product categories: the price hikes are mainly concentrated on DRAM contracts and enterprise-grade SSDs from manufacturers/distributors, rather than a comprehensive increase in consumer-grade NAND. "The bulk of the demand still comes from computing power centers; the actual demand from grassroots users is relatively low." Because the price increases were initially concentrated in the DRAM contract market and enterprise-grade SSD segment, this round of price hikes, when passed from manufacturers to distributors, didn't first reach end consumers, but rather the manufacturers and module suppliers sandwiched in between. These manufacturers are the first to bear the brunt of the price increases from manufacturers, and their different positions in the industry chain mean their feelings and pressures are significantly different. (Blue Whale News)