Toshiba gaining on Samsung in NAND flash

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Toshiba is closing the gap with Samsung in the NAND flash memory sales leaderboard.

New rankings from Isuppli show that overall revenues in the area grew to $4.36 billion in the first quarter of this year, a rise of 0.6 percent from $4.33 billion last quarter.

"With the economic downturn persisting until the second half of 2009, there was a lot of pent-up demand for consumer electronic products and semiconductors used in them, including NAND flash," noted Michael Yang, senior analyst for memory and storage at Isuppli. "With the economy on the mend, and demand for electronics on the rise, that demand has been unleashed, leading to strong sales for NAND flash in early 2010."

NAND sales have been on a bit of a decline recently, thanks mostly to the economic slowdown, however, the economy's new magic bullet, the Apple Ipad, will have a positive impact here.

"With price stability, a cautious sense of normalcy has emerged for NAND suppliers - a welcome change after the uncertainty of 2009," Yang added. "Sales are growing at an outsized rate for consumer electronics products and smart phones. The early success of Apple's Ipad also portends strong growth for NAND demand in tablets."

Of the manufacturers, Toshiba had the best first quarter this year, and gained just under three per cent of the market in comparison to the same time last year. Longtime pack leader Samsung lost 1.3 points.

Meanwhile, earlier this week Intel reaffirmed its commitment to 25nm NAND flash, and announced that it is mass-producing 25nm memory and shipping it in volume.

Intel said that its 8GB 25nm NAND flash memory chip can hold up to 2,000 songs, 7,000 photos or 8 hours of video. µ