“Sources indicated that Samsung recently informed them it has secured orders for 50 million 8Gb-equivalent NAND flash chips mainly for use in Apple’s iPhone,” Josephine Lien and Esther Lam report for DigiTimes.
“Amid the new orders, Samsung said it would sharply cut supply to other customers in July, they added,” Lien and Lam report.
“Apple already landed a batch of 25 million 8Gb-equivalent NAND flash chips from Samsung in June and commented that ongoing procurement will depend largely on iPhone sales,” Lien and Lam report.
Full article here.
[UPDATE: 10:49am EDT: Revised headline and changed “GB” to “Gb.” 8 gigabits (Gb) = 1 gigabyte (GB). Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Matt” for the heads up.]
Damn, that’s a lot of iPhones
Why 8GB and not 16GB. Are there 2 8GB chips in a 16GB iPhone?
Bloodbath? :->
Obviously, Apple is going to expand the platform soon. Like another iPhone model, and iPods too. And I have been waiting patiently for my 7″ slate with built in broadband access.
“Why 8GB and not 16GB. Are there 2 8GB chips in a 16GB iPhone?”
Yes.
Yep, it’s time. Chips all in.
How about 4 of them in a 32GB iPhone or iPod touch.
Seeing as I am waiting till Hell freezes over or Rogers gives us a reasonable plan in Canada, I guess I can also wait to get a 32GB iPhone.
8Gb (Gigabit) chips. Not 8 GB (gigabyte) chips. Does not equate to 50 million iPhones. Misleading headline but that is still going to be a lot of iPhones.
What about the iPod touch? Also, as mentioned above, is the 16GB a totally different design or does it just use 2 lots of 8GB? If it does then the same thing could apply for increased capacity touches.
50 million 8GB equivalents… or 25 million 16 GB equivalents. …
Add that to the 25 million chips delivered in June…. that’s a lot of flash!
These chips are used in both iPhone’s and in iPod’s….. perhaps Apple is going to revamp the iPod Touch?
I know I’m going to switch my family from Alltel when the contract runs out in September. I can’t wait to get an iPhone.
These estimated sales are about to be properly reflected in the stock price when more major investors decide to get on board. So many individuals are going to say I wish I had bought Apple (more) shares in the summer of 08. Fear of the overall market has discouraged AAPL from moving past the $200. but not for long.
sell out again
People are attracted to the 8 gig price…and the 6 gig capacity is still greater than most other phones so far. This doesn’t mean that they don’t have 16 gig orders.
Does anyone else realize what 50 million iPhone sales means to the smartphone market, and especially the competition. Actually, smartphones are soon going to affect laptop sales. My buddy walked into work yesterday with an iPod touch from a student promo and, with wifi and sync, that thing does 75% of what you would do on a laptop, even before the App store gets rolling. Soon, I will only need one low end iMac in the house to run PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, iLife, Final Cut Studio, and iTunes to sync up my mobile devices. Another upgrade to Aperature and two upgrades to iWeb, and I will dump Adobe and their upgrade pricing schemes forever. With Wii and the upcoming accelerometer games coming for iPhone and I am set.
to Gill:
I’m not sure if the original reporter is aware of the difference. 8Gb-equivalent is a pretty strange construct, unless he really meant 8GB-equivalent, which would be meaningful to everyone, as it is the nominal memory requirement for an iPhone. The message doesn’t specifically say what is the actual size of each individual chip (1GB? 2GB? 4GB?); all it gives us is a quantity that represents the number of units divided into 8Gb (or 8GB).
I have a feeling the author in fact intended to say exactly what MDN reported – 50 million 8GB-sets of memory chips (whatever their actual individual size).
8, not 6…I am blind.
MDN, it’s irresponsible reporting to put the title as 50m iPhones.
MDN’s reprint of the article is misleading. This order was for 8 gigabit(Gb) chips, NOT 8 gigabyte(GB) chips. 8Gb = 1GB. This more closely aligns with Apple’s sales goals.
Sorry Gil, didn’t see your post.
Last July I predicted 25m iPhone sales in 2008. I haven’t said a word since, just laughed at all the pathetic discussions about iPhone numbers taking place.
Hope I get to have the last laugh!
I presume the iPod Touch uses the same flash, perhaps the Nano as well. (Can anyone confirm?) So no one should expect 50 million iPhones based on this order. And if Apple finally releases a 16 GB Touch for $299, two of those chips are for me.
Sub 10m in 08 discussions I meant…
Should I repeat mine? The 8-gigabit grouping makes very little sense, since very few newspaper-reading people would know what it actually means. Keep in mind, the article didn’t say 50 million 8-gigabit chips; it specifically said 8-gigabit equivalent (i.e. a group of chips that totals 8 gigabits). This would be an arbitrary value that has no meaning to anyone. Why 8 gigabits? Why not 32Gb? (Or actually, why not 64-gigabit, which would be much more meaningful, as it would represent 8 gigabytes)?
As I said a few posts earlier, I’m convinced the original author of the article didn’t know the difference between Gb and GB (I wouldn’t be surprised if half of readers here don’t) and got them confused. MDN’s interpretation of the article is, most likely, correct.
@Gil
@Predrag
@just some guy
I hope you all have heard of google. You should try looking up what gigabit is vs gigabyte. If there was a 8 gigabit chip it would be an ethernet card and in a computer or wireless card. Which would be pointless to have until there were 8gigabit routers out there to support the speed. Also if you pay attention it said NAND FLASH so as you can see it is memory not wireless/network speed. One person puts in a lowercase b and the idiots roll out thinking its gigabit.
@mindpower
I agree, but it is a title that would attract more people in and want to read about it. I know I wouldn’t have clicked the link if it said they ordered a bunch of flash memory.
@predrag
pay no attention to my post, wasn’t meant to add your name in there.