| Page 2 of 2 < |
Flash Price Drop Spurs Innovation
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Brian Kumagi, senior business development manager NAND flash memory business at Toshiba, believes the lower cost of MLC NAND chips will play a major role in seeing 128G byte SSDs gain market share.
Toshiba is also offering MLC NAND SSDs in 32G byte and 64G byte capacities to entice laptop PC makers and makers of digital music players and other devices requiring more storage.
There are several other products where companies are adding NAND flash to increase storage capacity and improve devices. One, thanks to the iPhone, is handsets, said Elliott.
Multimedia handsets will likely see 8G bytes of embedded flash memory become the standard this year, and card slots are being added to a host of mobile phones to increase storage and for added content delivery, including movies, games, software and more.
Plus, low prices are encouraging new innovation, just as low NAND prices helped put the chips into more iPods earlier this decade. One area is in video cameras, namely,Flipvideo and similar devices.
For $119.99, users can buy a Flip video camcorder that uses NAND flash memory to store 30 minutes of recordings.
In addition, devices such as GPS (global positioning system) for cars will need more flash when 3D (three dimensional) digital maps start replacing 2D maps.
The good news for users is that there are so many NAND flash memory makers in the world today that prices will remain low or at least reasonable for a long time.
In a report titled "Flash to crash," Macquarie Securities chip analyst Warren Lau wrote that NAND flash memory prices will likely remain low throughout the first half of this year, with little room for upside until the third quarter.
"We continue to warn that NAND flash will see excess supply in the first half of 2008 owing to aggressive production ramp (at IM Flash and Toshiba) and the seasonally weaker period for consumer products (digital still cameras, handsets and MP3)," he wrote.
Much of the possible price movements in NAND flash actually depend on Apple because of the widespread popularity of the iPod and iPhone.
The company announced it has already shipped over 4 million iPhones and continues to ramp shipments. iPod shipment growth has dropped a bit, according to market researcher Gartner, but higher capacity iPod products such as the Touch have done well in the market.
"Apple is a critical driver of NAND flash consumption and will continue to yield great influence on NAND flash vendors," Gartner said in a report on Monday.
