Toshiba and SanDisk temporarily slash NAND Flash production by 30% in Yokkaichi
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 16th 2008 12:31AM
posted Dec 16th 2008 12:31AM
[Via EETimes]
Read - Toshiba's take
Read - SanDisk's take
Please note: If you're a current Engadget commenter, you do not need to re-register. Simply login and you will be prompted to select a username.
Anyone else think that was a circuit board/memory chip for a second?
Hellz YEAH!
I didn't realize it wasn't a circuit board until you mentoned it.
if its not, then what is it?!?
@Jack Storm: I guess it's a picture of the NAND factory. Like others, I thought it was a circuit board.
For a moment, yes. Glad I'm not alone in this. I was planning on posting about it and was amused to see it as the topic of the first post.
We were all so naive... They're just pretending to be a factory. It's really a giant, one-trillion terabyte flash drive! :D
haha I always check the comments just to see if anyone else thought what I was thinking :)
its like an "I Spy" MMO
Nice discovery! I did not realize until you mention too! The photo looks like a building prototype though.
"Optimal" demand, of course, would be that everybody in the world wants to buy a million chips every day. No, wait, a billion. No, wait...
im just trying to be friends here. stop bullying me
maybe has somehting to do with netbooks and ssd(s)
not a big suprise ! Everything is slowing down!!!
A total of 2 Intel assembly lines has just announced to stop operation in my place! The semocon industry is getting a big hit.
what is this?? Semi-conductor Cartel?
Just like OPEC, they're trying to use supply side controls to affect the price of flash. Makes sense though. I can buy 8GB of flash for less than what I spent on lunch today.
15 dollar lunch... ooooh aren't we the talk of the town.
@Gfxlonghorn
Not elitist, I only spent ~$12 (8GB USB < $12 http://snurl.com/8dkua) and that's only because food is expensive in my country and the USD is so very low right now.
unlike opec though, flash memory is not a necessity so cutting production will not work. in fact in the oligopolistic market of flash, toshiba and sandisk will be worse off
They actually are just hoping to drive the price of flash memory up, they have been complaining for months about it being to low.
Then again piling up stocks if they don't sell doesn't really help but when the time will come they will be back (which I think they already have a date, not willing to share with us, maybe not precise but sharp enough to and flexible enough so that they don't get trapped) and producing enough with more performance for market needs...
Glad I'm not the only one that sees the true intent here. OSPC (Organization of Semiconductor Producing Companies), here we come.
The way i understand it, to overcome this "recession" is for regular consumers to spend money..so why are the media enforcing that we are infact in a recession, thus instilling fear into everyone, making them clutch there wallets tightly to their chest?
This is obviously a very simply view on the matter, but yeah....*twitches eye*
Oh wait, when talking about the economy i have to include the obligatory, its time for change OBAMA!!11
That crossed my mind a few weeks ago. I just came to the assumption that the companies that will profit from the "recession" are linked to, or are, the companies that own the news outlets/media. Some people still don't realise that propaganda isn't just something that you learned about in high school history class about WW1 & 2. "Ramblings of a conspiricy! If they call is a conspiricy that means it's not true!"
OPEC
This move is like what OPEC does, collude and deliberately cut production knowing that a competitor cannot emerge quickly enough to compete and supply to consumers.
The semiconductor industry is tanking. Most companies are about to go brankrupt (like infineon, qimonda, nanya, elpida, etc) and are asking for government bailouts.
Basically, they say that there is an oversupply of memory on the market because consumers did not adopt Vista. The oversupply has driven the price below what it costs to manufacture.
So much for SSD drives getting cheaper. What they really should do instead of cutting production back 30% is start cranking out SSD drives on the cheap. Idling a factory or slowing down production from optimal levels isn't free. So why not take the opportunity to go gang busters in the SSD market with cheap drives. SSD drives start being more price competitive more people will buy them or buy them over platter drives. May not be a sustainable business plan, but evidently what they have been doing has been working either. And at the end of the day if we all get good, cheap, fast SSD drives, it's that whats really important?
And I though the reason why SSD were so expensive was because those companies couldn't keep up supply the SSD demand ;)