Too many weak hands bouncing around...the low equipment bookings level will bode well for global IC sales going forward
NAND flash receiving boost from low-cost notebooks
Latest news
Hans Wu, Taipei; Rodney Chan, DIGITIMES [Tuesday 22 April 2008]
The NAND flash market is receiving a major boost from PC vendors that are expected to adopt flash memory for their low-cost notebooks, according to industry sources.
First-tier vendors such as Dell, Hewlett Packard (HP), and Acer are expected to adopt embedded solid state drives (SSDs) for the low-cost notebooks that they are launching later this year, the sources noted.
The low-cost notebooks will feature SSDs ranging from 1-8GB, and it is estimated that each notebook will need 8-10 NAND flash chips, the sources said. With the low-cost notebook market expected to reach 20 million units this year, demand for NAND flash chips from the low-cost notebook market will amount to 200-300 million units, the sources added.
The total NAND flash chip output this year is estimated to reach 3-3.2 billion units, meaning the low-cost notebook market will account for about 6-8% of total NAND flash output, the sources noted.
With such strong demand coming from the low-cost notebook market, NAND flash prices are rising strongly. According to inSpectrum data, recent contract quotes for 8Gb multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash chips have shot up 14-16%, while 16Gb and 32Gb chips have seen prices rise 10-13%. |
