Editing by Greg Gao

The month-long pandemic lockdown in the northwestern Chinese city of Xi'an could disrupt DRAM/NAND supply in the market and push up memory chip prices, according to a report by KB Securities.  

Xi'an is home to a few major semiconductor manufacturing and testing facilities of Samsung and Micron. The city with a 13 million population went into lockdown from the Delta pandemic on December 23 last year, causing disturbances to production and operations in the city.

Samsung Electronics temporarily adjusted operations at its Xi'an manufacturing facilities and reduced the wafer input for NAND flash memory chips, which are used for data storage in data centers, smartphones, and other tech gadgets.

The capacity utilization rate of the U.S. memory chip giant Micron's factory in Xi'an also declined, and the workers in the DRAM packaging and testing production line have been reduced to 50% of the normal level. 

According to media reports, Micron said that the lockdown would lead to delays in the supply of its DRAM memory chips, which are widely used in data centers,

The KB Securities report noted the production disruption would prompt major electronic devices manufacturers to increase DRAM and NAND memory chip inventories, which is likely to drive up the price of memory chips in the first half of this year.