26th November 2003
Factories are predicting the flash memory stortage to continue for some time still. Initial predictions of flash memory ICs produced by Samsung indicated prices would plateau October, however most manufacturers and assemblers are expecting the current tight-supply to stretch still further in the coming months.
Whilst NAND IC prices seem to have stabilized a little, the future is still unknown - some assemblers are even disassembling flash products such as CompactFlash in order to extract the NAND ICs for use in their products. The ICs are simply more readily available in this form during certain weeks and months.
8th July 2003
Who would have thought two months ago that the flash memory shortage would continue for so long?
Our factories and NAND suppliers are now expecting flash memory to remain short through to August, perhaps even throughout August. NAND memory prices have also increased a little over 10% recently due to this shortage depending on the size of the NAND IC capacity.
The shortage of NAND flash memory from Samsung is due to the huge and growing demand for their use in portable devices from digital cameras and MP3 players to PDA's and multimedia mobile phones. And the growth in demand still shows no sign of abating.
NAND memory factories are again rushing to expand production capacity and meet existing and impending market supply requirements. In the meantime, factory allocations are going to mean prices will be tight -- rising and times, and stock will remain low and only available to those to have the buying power on certain items.
Products such as SmartMedia, Memory Stick and SD cards should remain readily available - however their prices will fluctuate over the next few weeks. CompactFlash will be affected in supply, being the most popular form of flash memory card on the market.
|
Accessories
Latest News
