“Apple Computer got a bargain on the memory chips that make its new iPod Nano music players so slim. And in doing so, Apple has thrown the market for flash memory into a tizzy: forcing prices up for other manufacturers and driving prices down for consumers,” Damon Darlin reports for The New York Times News Service. “No analyst seems to know for sure what Apple paid Samsung Electronics for the memory chips; estimates range from $85 (U.S.) to $120 for a 4-gigabyte chip that goes into a $250 Nano, or about a 30 per cent discount in exchange for buying 40 per cent of Samsung’s output this year.”

Darlin reports, “But that big purchase has tightened supplies of flash memory chips for everyone else. The repercussions have been felt by about 200 minor makers of MP3 players in Asia, or about half the industry, which have gone out of business because they cannot get parts, said Nam Hyung Kim, principal analyst at the iSuppli Corp., a market analysis firm that specializes in semiconductors.”

Full article here.

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