I dont know why Digitimes always seems to think that Samsung is a process generation ahead of where they actually are....AFAIK, they wont have a 8Gb part until the end of the year or early next year.
OTOH, it is true that high-density flash chips have been falling hard in price over the last several weeks.
digitimes.com
Paper: Samsung to continue lowering 8Gbit NAND flash prices
Hans Wu and outside sources, Taipei; Carrie Yu, DigiTimes.com [Wednesday 25 May 2005]
Samsung Electronics has been slashing the price of its 8Gbit NAND flash memory since the beginning of the year, with the original price of US$58 expected to eventually fall to US$30, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported.
In addition, Samsung has been lowering prices for all of its high-density parts, including 2Gbit, 4Gbit and 8Gbit NAND flash memory, with daily prices falling as much as 3%, the paper said. The company also expects to roll out a 16Gbit part in the second half of this year,.
According to DRAMeXchange, contract prices for Samsung’s 8Gbit part stood at US$56.5 in the first half of May, and sources stated the price has dropped to less than US$53 since then. However, the paper did not specify when the price was expected to fall to US$30.
Samsung was not available for comment at the time of publication.
Other sources indicated that Samsung is applying the aggressive price-cutting strategy for high-density NAND flash to remain competitive with Hynix Semiconductor, which is accelerating wafer starts for its NAND flash memory and will start volume producing 2Gbit NAND flash next month.
Chang-Gyu Hwang, president of the Samsung semiconductor operation, was quoted by the Semiconductor Reporter as forecasting that NAND flash memory prices will continue to fall 40% a year because of technological advancements.
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