GoKawiilThe storage market in general, and the SSD market in particular, has changed structurally in a matter of several quarters due to overwhelming demand for storage devices from the AI sector. As a result of the rapid price increase, demand for solid-state drives and other memory-based PC components dropped in retail in the first quarter. But as paradoxical as it might seem, shipments of SSD controllers increased in Q1 2026 so significantly that both Silicon Motion and its rival Phison posted record Q1 results. This happened not only because these companies increased sales of their data center and enterprise-grade controllers to hyperscalers and server makers, but also because they increased sales of all types of products, both to SSD producers and NAND manufacturers.
At Computex 2026, we sat down with Nelson Duann, Senior VP of Client & Automotive Storage Business at Silicon Motion, to find out how the company's business is going amid the ongoing structural market change and what to expect from SMI on the client storage front in the coming years.
We must say, Nelson Duann is a valuable speaker with an interesting background and a rather unique view on the market and technology development. He has been with SMI since 2007 and has led Silicon Motion's Client & Automotive Storage business since late 2023, when the company was reorganized into two business units and assigned new general managers for each. Duann is responsible for product strategy, OEM engagement, and program execution across these segments. Before assuming his current role, he headed marketing and R&D efforts for mobile storage products and played a significant role in expanding the company's SSD controller and mobile storage businesses into leading positions in their respective markets. Before Silicon Motion, Duann worked at Sun Microsystems on UltraSPARC processor development projects.
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Without further ado, let's get to talking.
A rough time the industry, a good time for SMI
Anton Shilov: It has been a rough year for the industry in general, and memory-related segments of the industry in particular, so far. Yet, here we are, your first quarter sales were $342.1 million, up 23% quarter-over-quarter and 105% year-over-years, with sales of SSD controllers up 40% to 45% year-over-year. How did you manage to achieve that? At least on your side of the business.
Nelson Duann: There were two main drivers behind the growth of our business unit in the first quarter.
The first was our Ferri product line, where we sell complete storage solutions rather than just controllers. As NAND prices increased, the prices of those solutions rose as well. We performed particularly well in data center boot drives. On the automotive side, many NAND suppliers have made automotive a low-priority market despite strong demand from carmakers. Ferri is one of the few products that can still ensure supply, so we benefited both from higher NAND ASPs and from having inventory available to serve customers.
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