iPhone / iPod to consume 25% of global flash memory output?

C'mon, don't act so shocked -- you had to realize that these record sales of NAND-based iPhones and iPods were using up some serious flash memory, right? Turns out, Apple's two biggest hits are "expected to consume 25-percent of the global flash output," which could in turn drive up prices of said memory in the not too distant future. DRAMeXchange, a market research company out of Taiwan that tracks the memory industry, further suggested that it could take "about two to three quarters before manufacturers can raise their chip yield rates to a higher level," which doesn't bode well for anyone hoping to see a price cut on any of Apple's handhelds due to increased volume purchasing in the memory department.

[Via CNET]

[David @ Jul 19th 2007 2:40AM]

Really? Does the world only make ~5 million flash memory/year?

Anyways, how do they calculate this "25%"?

[Ignacio @ Jul 19th 2007 10:31AM]

5 million? And that makes Apple's 1.25 million iPods a year, since they use 25% of all flash produced? I think your numbers are way off, considering that Apple sold over 100 million iPods since 2001, and more than half of them were flash-based.

[Kryz @ Jul 19th 2007 2:51AM]

Uhm, David, I don't know how you calculate this 5 million, but in the past few weeks I think at least half a million iPhones were sold. That's only in the US. If you count iPods sold as well, but then stretched over the whole year, and do that times 4, I think you will find you will go quite a bit past 5 million flash units.

But anyway, back on-topic: this sounds a lot like sentiment-news to me. It's simple: Apple has agreed with a number of suppliers to receive an agreed amount of flash units. For the iPhone it wasn't clear how many were really needed, because no one knew how many people would actually buy one, but as far as I understand it, the flash units in the iPhone are mostly only used in the iPhone, so largely they are only produced specifically for the iPhone. For the different iPods I don't know if this is true, but technically, nothing has changed there recently, so Apple and the flash suppliers have known for quite some time how many are being sold and therefor what the demand is. If they can't match the demand, this means someone performed very poorly in the planning department.

In other words: I don't believe it, sounds like a load of crock.

[Vinay @ Jul 19th 2007 5:46AM]

"iPhone / iPod to consume 25% of global flash memory."


Precious Flash memory wasted on a crappy player. And phone.

Anyway, if this helps bring down the price of Flash memory, I'm all for it.

[Michael @ Jul 19th 2007 8:15AM]

Considering that Apple's profit accounts for about 2/3rd of 8Gig's iPhone - we will or will not see price cuts based on Steve's say so - not based on component pricing...

Michael

[Ian Jardine @ Jul 19th 2007 8:47AM]

IF this were true how come that Intel just reported this seotor as being below target for them? Intel has several joint venture plants in this business so they would directly benefit from increased demand.

[Galley @ Jul 19th 2007 9:06AM]

Just wait until Apple abandons HDD's altogether for their iPods. It may happen sooner than you think.

[Nick @ Jul 19th 2007 10:27AM]

i concur

[Chris @ Jul 19th 2007 9:44AM]

Maybe we should be looking at this from another point of view and ask, "Has flash production increased ~25% due to iPod/iPhone demand?"

If the device wasn't there to consume the resource would production be this high? Eggs or chicken anyone?

[ark_v2 @ Jul 19th 2007 11:36AM]

Ha, imagine how will the total output rise when the SSD starts to take over.

[grayskyes @ Jul 19th 2007 11:50AM]

Maybe the record companies should get into making flash memory and give away music for free!

[bob @ Jul 19th 2007 12:13PM]

time is to green

[Harbinger @ Jul 19th 2007 2:23PM]

"Turns out, Apple's two biggest hits are "expected to consume 25-percent of the global flash output," which could in turn drive up prices of said memory in the not too distant future."

So the price is stuck because Apple is buying too much memory?

Why does that totally not make sense to me. It's supply and demand no? It's stuck at that price because companies are willing to pay that much for it.

[bob @ Jul 19th 2007 10:16PM]

sandisk rocks

[Andrew @ Jul 20th 2007 1:39AM]

is this a projection on new flash based higher capacity iPods coming down the pipe? i suspect there is a 30GB flash based iPod video coming soon...