June 19, 2012
Market specialists predict a 23.6 percent growth for the NAND Flash market in 2012
As a Commodity market, (or a market where raw or primary products are exchanged), Flash memory has been constantly subject to a juxtaposition of overabundance and shortages hence their unpredictable fluctuations in market costs. Over the spring of 2012, for example, a surplus has led NAND flash manufacturers to diminish their excess inventories. As we enter the summer and fall months however, the market could be turning in the other direction. The Semico Research Corporation, a respected semiconductor marketing and consulting Research Company located in Phoenix, Arizona, recently sat with EE Times to discuss what they believe lies ahead for the NAND Flash Market.
They conclude that the NAND Flash market has spent the first half of the year reducing inventories because businesses were afraid of where the economy was going to go. Inventories may have been reduced a bit too drastically and as a result, we will see some tight supplies for the second half of the year. Semico also noted that there was an unusually strong demand that occurred in 2011 because of component shortages due to the flooding in Japan. They believe the market will get back to pre-flood production the end of this quarter and into the third quarter.
For 2012, were looking at a NAND flash market of almost $31 billion, for a 23.6% growth. Thats an improvement from 2011, which was 15.3% growth at $25 billion. The NAND flash has done well because of recent popularity of smartphones and tablets, as well as SSDs going into the enterprise and cloud computing. If we look out to 2015, Semico predicts the market is going to reach $57 billion.
These main market drivers, (smartphones and tablet computers), are key to the success of the NAND Flash market. In 2011 alone, the smartphones market grew at about 29% which was a little higher than what Semico had expected. In 2012, were looking at 34% growth. The tablet market will probably expand to the range of 48% to 49% this year. Each year they put more NAND flash into their systems, so there's quite a lot of growth. Apples iPad alone accounted for 78% of global NAND technology shipments in 2011. According to IHS iSuppli, Apple's iPad tablet is expected to dominate worldwide demand for NAND flash in media tablets at least through 2015.
Hybrid machines -- systems with both a hard drive and solid state drive -- will help keep product prices down. For example, a lower-capacity SSD can be used for loaded an operating system and applications, while a high-capacity hard drive can still be used as its mass storage device. But regardless of price, however, having a hard drive may be seen as a disadvantage in the future.
As for the idea that cloud computing will bury the use of NAND Flash in portable devices, Semico believes that people will still want to take their files, photos, movies and games with them. Although we talk about how we're connected everywhere, there are a lot of places where we aren't. As we move forward, you can store your applications on the cloud so you don't have to have a huge rotating hard drive on your notebook but I still think there's a trend of people wanting to keep their content locally.
They conclude that the NAND Flash market has spent the first half of the year reducing inventories because businesses were afraid of where the economy was going to go. Inventories may have been reduced a bit too drastically and as a result, we will see some tight supplies for the second half of the year. Semico also noted that there was an unusually strong demand that occurred in 2011 because of component shortages due to the flooding in Japan. They believe the market will get back to pre-flood production the end of this quarter and into the third quarter.
For 2012, were looking at a NAND flash market of almost $31 billion, for a 23.6% growth. Thats an improvement from 2011, which was 15.3% growth at $25 billion. The NAND flash has done well because of recent popularity of smartphones and tablets, as well as SSDs going into the enterprise and cloud computing. If we look out to 2015, Semico predicts the market is going to reach $57 billion.
These main market drivers, (smartphones and tablet computers), are key to the success of the NAND Flash market. In 2011 alone, the smartphones market grew at about 29% which was a little higher than what Semico had expected. In 2012, were looking at 34% growth. The tablet market will probably expand to the range of 48% to 49% this year. Each year they put more NAND flash into their systems, so there's quite a lot of growth. Apples iPad alone accounted for 78% of global NAND technology shipments in 2011. According to IHS iSuppli, Apple's iPad tablet is expected to dominate worldwide demand for NAND flash in media tablets at least through 2015.
Hybrid machines -- systems with both a hard drive and solid state drive -- will help keep product prices down. For example, a lower-capacity SSD can be used for loaded an operating system and applications, while a high-capacity hard drive can still be used as its mass storage device. But regardless of price, however, having a hard drive may be seen as a disadvantage in the future.
As for the idea that cloud computing will bury the use of NAND Flash in portable devices, Semico believes that people will still want to take their files, photos, movies and games with them. Although we talk about how we're connected everywhere, there are a lot of places where we aren't. As we move forward, you can store your applications on the cloud so you don't have to have a huge rotating hard drive on your notebook but I still think there's a trend of people wanting to keep their content locally.
