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All your flash are belong to us
A second report has surfaced accusing Apple of bogarting the world's supply of NAND flash. The chips are most commonly used for memory in phones, MP3 players, thumb drives and solid-state hard drives.
According to DRAM exchange, Apple plans on using so many of the chips for the iPod and iPhone, the company could consume as much as 25% of the world's total flash output.
Last week, Digitimes made a similar report, suggesting that Apple's big appetite for flash was leading Hynix and Samsung to be unable to fill some orders. This is only being made worse by the fact that NAND manufacturers are still trying to ratchet up production after taking big hits earlier this year when lower demand dropped prices.
Last week we spoke with iSuppli's Nam Hyung-Kim. He said that if suppliers are in fact unable to meet demand, don't expect any of the big names to get shorted on their orders. As usual, the little companies further down in the pecking order will see the brunt of this. Kim also said that a shortage would most likely last only a few weeks and that the market should stabilize in August.
Hopefully in the meantime, Apple will have assembled enough memory to roll out new iPods, take the iPhone global, and pull several million new members to the cult of Saint Stevie this holiday season.
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