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Apple may launch laptops using flash chips for storage

Apple Inc, maker of the iPod music players and Macintosh personal computers, may introduce a new laptop this year that will save data on flash memory chips instead of a hard drive, American Technology Research said.

"Our sources indicate that Apple would like to introduce the product in the second half to further capitalize on its strong MacBook growth,'' Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, wrote in a report dated Wednesday.

The release date of Apple's lighter and smaller notebook personal computer may depend on how much prices of NAND flash memory chips decline as they are still seven to eight times more expensive than hard-disk drives, Wu wrote.

Samsung Electronics Co and other chipmakers in the US$12 billion NAND flash market are counting on laptops to help fuel future growth of the chips, which have already replaced hard drives as the most common type of storage device in portable music players.

Sales of chip-based storage in PCs may surge eightfold in the latter half of the decade, Samsung said.

In 2005, Apple used NAND flash chips to make the iPod Nano, reducing the size of the company's flagship music player by 80 percent.

Samsung said in March last year it built the world's first laptop that saves files on flash.
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