Posted on Tuesday, November 20 2007 @ 0:30 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Samsung
announced a change in its NAND memory strategy. The firm says it will reduce NAND memory supply to Taiwanese memory card makers in order to launch own-brand memory cards:
Samsung will target the Samsung-brand memory cards for handset customers first, but may introduce the memory cards to the retail market in the future. Handsets customers from Europe will be the first to take up the Samsung-brand memory cards, the sources added.
The sources said that Samsung has been considering the introduction of own-brand memory cards for quite a while but has faced strong protest from its customers. The introduction will mark a reshuffle in Samsung's NAND flash business and its attempt to reduce reliance on Taiwan memory card customers, they highlighted.
The tense relationship between Samsung and Taiwan-based memory card makers in the past is also said to be another major reason prompting Samsung to try to reduce its reliance on Taiwan memory card customers. Taiwan memory card makers trimmed their procurement at Samsung after seeing critical price fluctuation in early August following the power outage at Samsung's fab, noted the sources. Additionally Samsung is said to have found customers from Taiwan sometimes hard to deal with as they have been known to request price compensation after seeing memory prices plunge too much after they had procured chips.
