Summary of the Conference Call on Enterprise Storage Supercycle Industry Overview - The enterprise storage market is experiencing robust growth, particularly driven by AI demand, leading to a supply-demand imbalance expected to last longer than previous cycles [1][7] - The storage industry is witnessing a confirmed and sustained price increase trend, with DRAM prices significantly rising and NAND beginning to catch up, primarily driven by increased enterprise demand [1][8] Key Insights - The AI-driven storage supercycle is anticipated to start in the second half of 2025, as AI models shift from training to inference optimization, increasing the demand for data storage and processing [1][9] - SSD demand is expected to exceed forecasts due to the need for tiered storage architectures that optimize cost, efficiency, and response times, making SSDs critical for hot and warm data storage [1][10][11] - Cold data, which constitutes 80% of the data during AI inference, is primarily stored on HDDs, leading to increased purchases by cloud service providers despite higher power costs [1][13] Market Dynamics - The supply of HDDs is tight, prompting some cloud service providers to opt for QLC SSDs to meet cold storage needs, which is driving up NAND wafer demand [1][3][13] - HDD prices have surged due to supply shortages, while SSD technology is evolving, leading to increased adoption in enterprise applications [2][4] Competitive Landscape - International companies like Seagate and Western Digital have seen significant growth in HDDs, while domestic manufacturers are accelerating their entry into the enterprise market due to rising local demand for domestic alternatives [5] Future Trends - Key drivers for the future of the storage industry include technological advancements, increasing market demand from AI and big data, and national policies supporting domestic production [6] - The enterprise storage market has shown stable growth from 2021 to the present, with a significant increase in demand expected from 2023 to 2024 due to supply constraints from major manufacturers [6] Price Projections - NAND prices are projected to rise by 10-15% in Q4 2025 and an additional 5-10% in the first half of 2026, with enterprise SSD demand squeezing consumer-grade capacity and leading to price increases in that segment [3][13] Market Outlook - The storage market's favorable conditions are expected to persist until at least Q2 2026, with a focus on high-performance memory demand driven by AI computing [14] - Future attention should be given to domestic storage module or chip manufacturers and upstream packaging and testing equipment sectors, which may benefit from the ongoing supercycle [14]