NAND flash suppliers consider hiking prices

Josephine Lien, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Thursday 20 September 2012]

The world's top-4 NAND flash chip suppliers, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, SanDisk and SK Hynix, are expected to hike their product prices due to strong demand for flash memory chips from the smartphone sector. The increase rate is likely to reach 10-15% by mid-November, according to industry sources.

Strong sales anticipated for the recently released iPhone 5 from Apple, the Galaxy S3 from Samsung Electronics and Windows Phone 8 models from HTC will drive up demand for NAND flash, the sources explained.

Sales of the iPhone alone are expected to top 50 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, persuading the top-tier NAND flash suppliers to lure orders from Apple, indicated the sources.

Although Apple has shifted all of its NAND flash orders to Toshiba, SanDisk and Hynix instead of giving a major portion of orders to Samsung as it did previously, Samsung seems to have not been affected by Apple's move and is busy shipping chips for its own Galaxy S series smartphones.

Additionally, NAND flash capacity at SanDisk and Hynix have been fully booked by Apple, resulting in a tight supply of the flash memory chips, indicated the sources.

Acknowledging the increasing tight supply, some channel operators have also stepped up their purchases of NAND flash parts, added the sources.