Industry Snapshot: The NAND Flash Memory Market

One of the goals of Flash Driven is to extensively cover the industry which includes keeping an eye on the market for flash memory products. This will be our first in a series of reports based on different figures from various resources.

First of all, this website will be primarily concerned with the NAND Flash Memory market.

What is the NAND Flash Memory market? The flash memory market is divided into two different types, the NOR and NAND gates. This explanation for the difference between the two is simple enough to understand but if you want to get a more detailed technical explanation, our link at Answers.com has that as well.

"“Flash memory chips are constructed of either NOR or NAND gates. NOR chips function like a computer's main memory, while NAND works like a hard disk. For example, in a digital camera, NOR flash contains the camera's internal software, while NAND flash is used to store the images."” Answers.com.

SD cards, Compact Flash or USB drives are NAND storage types.

Based on calculations gathered from different sources, the global market for NAND Flash Memory is growing at an average of 74% per year. In 2005, the NAND Flash Memory market stood at $10.9 billion. In just 5 years, this market has grown by 808%!



The NAND Flash memory market leaders consist of Samsung at 52.9%and Toshiba with 21.9% market share. Here is a rundown of the top NAND memory makers based on iSupply data and reported at Digitimes.

1. Samsung - 52.9% Market Share
2. Toshiba - 21.9%
3. Hynix - 12.7%
4. Renesas- 6.8%
5. Micron Technology - 2.2%
6. ST Microelectronics - 2.0%
7. Infineon - 1.5%

Article Sources:
In-Stat
TechWeb
EETimes
IT World
e-Kiet Industrial & Economic Information
Electronics Weekly
Digitimes