Samsung Electronics Co, the world's second-biggest chipmaker, expects prices for memory chips used in consumer electronics to stabilize at the end of the first half of the year on growing demand, a company executive said yesterday in Taipei.
The official's remarks came amid a continued fall in the price of NAND-flash memory chips, driven by oversupply as well as slow sales of Apple Computer Inc's digital music player, the iPod Nano.
But the decline seems to have slowed temporarily.
"I think the price will stabilize at the end of the second quarter ? There are so many reasons, including increasing demand," Hwang Chang-gyu, president of Samsung's semiconductor business, said on the sidelines of the annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei.
The South Korean chipmaker now leads the world's NAND flash-memory market with a 42 percent share, followed by Japan's Toshiba Corp and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, another South Korean chipmaker. According to market researcher ISuppli's estimates, Samsung, Toshiba and Hynix collectively sold US$3.1 billion worth of NAND flash-memory chips in the fourth quarter, accounting for about 86 percent of the market.
"So we continue to introduce more high-density [chips] for new applications," Hwang said.
Samsung yesterday unveiled NAND flash memory chips that can be used in notebook computers, diversifying the use of NAND chips to that sector. The chips can store 32 gigabytes of files, the company said in a statement.
The company forecasts that the market for such chips for notebook computers will rise to US$4.5 billion by 2010 from US$540 million this year.
Currently, NAND flash-memory chips are used for media storage in a wide range of consumer electronics such as digital cameras.
For this year, "overall demand for flash memory [chips] will be strong," Hwang said.
More mobile phones that enable Internet connection on advanced third-generation technology are equipped with embedded flash memory cards, he said.
In addition, demand for higher density memory chips for mobile gadgets such as MP3 players would be another driver, he continued.
In the past month alone, the contract price for the mainstay 4-gigabyte flash memory chips has slumped by 31 percent to an average US$11.4 per unit, according to the latest statistics from online price-fixer DRAMeXchange.
But Samsung will hold to its previous forecast of a less than 20 percent quarterly decline in the price of NAND flash memory chips in the current quarter, Hwang said.
Asked whether more memory chipmakers entering the flash memory chip market would add to the supply glut, Hwang said "it won't be a problem," citing gradually diversifying applications.
Taiwan's three main computer memory chipmakers, led by Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (
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