NAND Flash Trends In The Growing Market
NAND flash memory technology is on the rise. With NAND flash memory finding mainstream use in the form of promotional usb flash drives and additional mobile storage, the growth in sales is expected. Widespread and ever increasing user demand for smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices is also ensuring that the growth of NAND won’t show signs of stalling anytime soon. An overview of the trends in NAND flash from past years and the present reveals many things that users can expect in the way flash will develop in the future.
The NAND flash’s global market is currently dominated by the Korean and Japanese giants in the technology’s development, Samsung and Toshiba, respectively. Only one major NAND memory chip-maker from the US, Micron Technology, manages a share that can stand up to the figures held by the two Asian companies; it, nevertheless, offers enough competition to continue production.
In recent years, the surge of iPad, iPhone, Android, and other devices’ sales caused NAND chip makers to increase production. This move prompted an oversupply in the memory market, leading to extremely cheap prices for NAND flash units to the point that prices are now artificially low. The oversupply is still evident today, and sources claim that prices will continue dropping throughout the year. It’s not until next year, 2013, that the market will witness a halting or slowing down of the decline rate in costs.
In an attempt to correct the balance between supply and demand in the market, some NAND flash memory companies have started to cut down on production. The holder of almost 30% of the global market for NAND flash, Toshiba, recently announced a cut in production of 30%. Smaller NAND chip makers are closing up shop this year because of the continual decline in prices, resulting in a much needed consolidation of the market.
In contrast to the decline of prices, the average storage capacity of NAND flash drives are projected to grow about 50%, the main growth driving the trend being NAND-dependent mobile devices, smartphones, and tablets. NAND’s capacity for high performance is one of the major reasons for this growth. To illustrate the influential quality of NAND flash, the quoted consumption for tablets by 2014 because of it is set at 12.3 billion gigabytes.
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