For NAND Flash memory suppliers, good news comes: after a challenging first half in 2012, NAND will continue its surprising growth in October last year. It is expected to NAND Flash memory in this year to fare brighter than ever, with revenue reaching $23.1 billion, up a stalwart 14% from $20.2 billion last year, according to market researcher IHS.
In 2012, NAND saw revenue exceeding $5.6 billion only in the last quarter; but three this year will outperform the best result of last year, IHS said. In addition,
DRAMeXchange, a research division of TrendForce also points out NAND Flash contract prices in 1H'June have grown 2-4%. The contributors include smartphones, tablet computers, and solid-state drives and new hybrid hard disk drives (HDD).
Before last October, NAND flash memory has suffered five consecutive quarters of decline and a slowdown in consumption in smartphones and tablets despite the rapid growth and penetration of them in the market. The decline was mainly in flash memory loading. Memory capacity in phones was down to 12.8 gigabytes (GB) from 13.2 GB; while tablets to 24.0 GB from 32.1 GB.
The major application markets (smartphone and tablets) in this year can raise manufacturers’ confidence. With the development of social networking, consumers posing high demand for low power consumption, NAND flash memory ushers in spring in various segments, said
IC Insights.
Smartphones this year is expected to represent 26% of the $30.0 billion NAND flash memory market. Smartphone contains as much as 9x more NAND flash, so the huge shipments of smartphone (about 975 million of 1,745 total shipments) are the strong backing of NAND flash market.
Tablets, the largest enemy of traditional PC market, will see shipments of 167 million units. Usually, leading tablet PCs feature 16GB of NAND flash as a starting point, so you can calculate the usage of NAND flash memory.
Due to the boost from mobile devices, SSD (solid-state drives) becomes the rival of hard disk drives, increasingly expanding its market shares. In addition, since SSDs are built in form-factor sizes that are identical to hard-disk drives (such as 1.8- and 2.5-inch modules) so they can be easily plugged into existing PC and notebook designs. It is projected that SSDs will account for 13% of NAND flash memory sales this year.
Affected by PC weakness, HDD poses requirements for improvement. New hybrid hard disk drives will be an important driver for NAND flash memory market, said IHS. For instance, one product introduced by Western Digital incorporates 24-gigabyte NAND cache.
Other drivers include consoles and other consumer electronics.
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NAND flash memory, NAND flash market