“Samsung Electronics and Apple have been in talks recently at Samsung’s headquarters in South Korea for the purchase of a volume of NAND flash, with the chips to be purchased covering those to be used in all iPods and iPhones from June to year-end 2007, according to sources,” Josephine Lien and Carrie Yu report for DigiTimes.
“Apple is asking for 400-500 million 4Gbit NAND flash equivalent chips from Samsung, the sources said. Since the volume requested by Apple is 10-15% more than what the two parties agreed earlier, Samsung is not 100% sure its capacity can meet the need,” Lien and Yu report.
“Apple has requested that Hynix Semiconductor increases its supply of NAND flash for the third quarter while Hynix also has barely enough capacity to meet Apple’s needs,” Lien and Yu report.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Peter” for the heads up.]
Consumers rejoice. Competitors cry.
Apple has also given intel and Micron $250 million each to form a joint venture (IM Flash) to secure future Flash memory. IM will be producing flash with 72 and 50 nm technology.
Oh, and their manufacturing facility is down the street from me. I curse the traffic that place produces each night at 5:30.
“….I curse the traffic that place produces each night at 5:30…
You think its bad now .. wait till all those drivers get their hands on the iPhone !
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400-500 million chips?
Where are all those chips going?
it is not 400 to 500 million.
the article is wrong,
Finally, a company wise enough and focussed enough to start really making use of developments in technology!
Well, you need 8 of them for a 4 GB iPod/iPhone, and 16 per 8 GB iPod/iPhone.
25 million 8 GB devices (to be sold 2nd half CY07) would be 400 million chips. So it seems within reason.
Understand that both iPhone models will use the 4 GB chip (two in the 8 GB model).
Assume this is a 12-month request. iPhone sells 10 million in it’s first year. 1 of 4 iPhones sold is likely to be an 8 GB model. This means the iPhone will have consumed 12.5 million 4 GB NAND Flash memory modules.
iPod HD (AKA video), will also use a plethora of 4 GB NAND modules, as will the new nano.
iPods using these chips will likely sell 30 million units over the next 12 months, which will consumer up to 3 – 4 x worth of 4 GB NAND modules, or 90 million – 120 million.
This brings the totals to roughly 150 million 4 GB NAND Flash models.
The remaining 150 – 250 million 4 GB modules will be used in the MacBook Pro “thin” which is likely to be 32 GB – 64 GB worth of 4 GB chips…
That’s BS. Digitimes is wrong as always.
So is it 400 or 500 million, because it is a huge difference.
Gbit and GB are very different
RAM, RAM, who’s got the RAM?
all i can say is yikes! Apple is becoming the 1000 pound gorilla in buying up production on these things
Apple is the WalMart of Flash
How can the competition catch up? when all the tech they don’t even know they need has been hoovered up by the mother of all Ciders?!!! By the time they cotton on, there will be no components left, by the time they lay their mits on some, Apple will have moved on to something else, even we don’t know that we have a terrible need for. Just look at the investment made according to Anaknipedro (ps Please simplify your name!) Go Apple! go Apple!
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So…get to work! Just kidding, dang that pushy Apple.