iPhone triggers boom in flash memory
Source: iSuppli Corp.
Thanks in large part to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and the growing ranks of iPhone imitators, worldwide sales of NAND-type flash memory are expected to rise nearly six-fold from 2008 to 2013, according to a report by iSuppli Corp. issued Wednesday.
Global revenue from sales of NAND flash for mobile phones could hit $932.5 million in 2013, according to iSuppli, up from $166.5 million in 2008 — a compound annual growth rate of 41.1%.
“NAND flash makers can thank Apple Inc. for starting this trend, with its iPhone models injecting new life into the memory market," writes Michael Yang, senior analyst for mobile and emerging memories at iSuppli. "However, with the introduction of the a new generation of ‘iPhone killers,’ multiple smartphone makers now are helping to drive NAND demand.”
Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones in its last fiscal quarter and is planning to introduce a version the phone in China. "This," says Yang, "will open up the market for the iPhone to a new potential audience of 1.3 billion people.”
Yang also credits Apple with raising the bar for how much memory manufacturers are expected to pack into their smartphones.
“The more NAND in a smart phone, the more useful it becomes, able to store more songs and video clips, to hold more map data and download more programs from an applications store,” Yang said. He points out that the entry level iPhones in 2007 had 4 GB of NAND. Today, the entry level iPhone 3GS have four times that capacity, and the 32 GB model has increased it eightfold.
The smartphones he calls the "iPhone killers" — the Palm (PALM) Pre, the BlackBerry (RIMM) Storm and the GI running Google's (GOOG) Android OS — all come with 8 GB of NAND. Some come with more; the Nokia (NOK) N7, for example, packs 32 GB.
He predicts that the average mobile phone in four years will have 5.8 GB of NAND flash built in, up from less than 1 GB in 2008.
NAND flash is an especially dense from of non-volatile memory. It was introduced by Toshiba more than 20 years ago and is widely used today in memory cards and USB drives, as well as mobile phones.
Apple COO Tim Cook announced on July 21 that Apple had made a $500 million prepayment to Toshiba as part of a long-term agreement to supply Cupertino with flash memory. "We view flash as a very key component for us because we use it in so many of our products," he told analysts during Apple's Q3 earnings call, "and also we're a reasonable percentage of users of flash on a worldwide basis."
When Apple II was introduced the number one draw was its games. VisiCalc and Wordstar were soon written and people started using VisiCalc and Wordstar for serious business and educational usage. When Apple developed the Hypertext the world was shaken by its innovation and Apple started making serious machines like the Lisa and the MacIntosh. Ashton Tate developed the dBase for Apple which was a decent database and Apple started to become a serious business computer.
IBM took the idea of Apple II and came out with the Personal Computer. Lotus developed the 123 and later the Symphony, Micrisoft developed the Word, Excel to compete with Lotus. Ashton Tate dBase was ported to the PC and Foxpro was developed to make databases worthwhile on the PC.
Ever since then the world has been frozen in place by the IBM/Microsoft duet and Apple almost combusted. John Sculley almost buried Apple but then John Akers almost ruined IBM until Lou Gerschner saved IBM and Steve Jobs came back from Next Inc. to rescue the dying Apple with the iPod. Meanwhile, IBM lost almost all relevance and credibility with its stubborness with OS/2 as Microsoft reaped the fruit from its joint venture with IBM in developing OS/2 and later used the OS/2 3.0 to create the Windows NT which is the father all subsequent Windows servers as Windows 95 destroyed OS/2 and swept the world handing the undisputed crown to Microsoft which became the soul of the ubiquitous PC which still rules today. Even the Mac allows installation of the XP and Vista thru its bootcamp facility.
Windows makes PC the only desktop PC and notebook and netbook computers. The Mac has to survive by playing around the Windows turf. But, really, how useful are the PC to us? Whether personally or at work? Please do think deeply.
My own opinion is that the PC is not awfully useful.
I am hoping the new Macs and iPhones can give me machines that are finally useful and meaningful, perhaps I can even define what that means.
Winston said, "the Pre has the edge, it can Multifunction, it has a real keyboard, it gives you the ability to change its battery, its camera has a flash and it can function on a 4G platform"
LOL! You do know that there is only ONE essential multifunction right? That is the ability to answer a call when you are doing something else, like playing a game or surfing the web or listening to music. The iPhone can do that, and the Pre can't. Game over. The Pre can run a few web widgets, simultaneously, which is something the iPhone engineers specifically chose not to allow, for usability reasons. Nothing to do with functional inability. It was a choice. Just like Apple chose not to allow Flash on the iPhone. It was a choice for usability.
You should try using the device and not just read the marketing material.
BTW, I own both, Palm and Apple shares.
@Winston,
LOL! You must be a hardware geek. The beauty of the iPhone is software integrated with its hardware, and that was written by Apple. Palm is too cheap to even write a sync app to transfer music and video from iTunes.
Yeah, come back next year. The gap will be even wider than it is today; it's getting wider everyday. And not in the direction that you think it is.
Oh, yes… Apple's Newton predated the Palm PDA by years.
First, doesn't the iPhone look more like a PDA, albeit one that has kept up the exponential growth in technology? If everyone idolizes the iPhone then one could easily say that the iPhone idolized the Palm PDA. Can you tell me what hardware exists in the iPhone that Apple created? We all know the Applications are all third party, but few of us know that Apple designed the iPhone from manufactured parts made by third party vendors. In essence what I am trying to allude to is that their is nothing technologically unique about the iPhone other than the amalgamation of technology by third party vendors packaged very well by Apple. Already the iPhone has a worthy contender at its doors (the Palm Pre) that with time will gnaw away at its market share. Short of a mature App Store with plenty of titles, albeit the majority are junk applications, the iPhone really holds no tech. advantages over the Pre. If anything the Pre has the edge, it can Multifunction, it has a real keyboard, it gives you the ability to change its battery, its camera has a flash and it can function on a 4G platform. Don't you think the Pre can also add memory like the iPhone 3GS? Don't you think the Pre will also add a video capacity? What I am saying is the iPhone technologically holds nothing over the Pre and it is only a matter of time before the rest of the market also begins to emulate it, however I have to be frank Palm is one up on the iPhone and I can only see the gap getting wider with time. Let us see what happens this time next year. I suspect we will have a much improved Pre functioning on a ubiquitous 4G platform. Now let's see what Apple can do with its iPhone on ATT's inferior 3G platform.
Oh, geez, don't upset the Canadians! Next thing you know, they'll tell you they invented basketball!
I kid! I kid!
Posted By James, Toronto, Scarborough: August 5, 2009 6:56 PM
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Whatever I say, Rim started the Nand demand by offering a 2 gigabyte Nand slot inside its blackburied curve for storing graphics, texts, photos and sound files back in 2006, one year before iPhone’s birthday.
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Ever heard of the iPod Nano?
This article has a typo: it should be "Rim-killer", not "iPhone-killer".
Whatever I say, Rim started the Nand demand by offering a 2 gigabyte Nand slot inside its blackburied curve for storing graphics, texts, photos and sound files back in 2006, one year before iPhone's birthday.
Since then, all kinds of phones (even VCRs and cameras) start adding Nand to their devices just like the Rim blackburied.
iPhone took the cue and doubled the Nand to 4 gigabytes in its first product, and the iPod Touch can hold 64 gigabytes. Many small under 3 pound computers offer Nand instead of hard disks.
Since the 2 gigabyte Rim blackburied curve, every 'new' blackburied sequentially retrograde in both value and quality. I think Rim is its own blackburied-killer in the world. The way Rim is shrinking like Benjamin Button Rim should be out of business by no more than the year 2013.
Nobody is an iPhone-killer. Everybody is an iPhone-idolizer making iPhone their idol………now there's the proper name for the iPhone……it should be renamed the Apple iDol.
ex ped: For the record, that's not a typo. That's a difference of opinion.
Well i think apple is the best phone ever they have changed the concept of mobile phone as they come up with the softest but reliable touch screen system. And Now they are coming up with new Apple Tablet PC which will be out next month here in UK. Yes it is true. Here is the information http://www.domesticutilities.com/apple.htm