Posted on Thursday, April 05 2012 @ 20:06 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Toshiba announced it plans to expand its NAND flash memory production capacity to cope with future demand. Electronista
writes the firm will start construction of the second piece of a fifth plant in Yokkaichi this summer, with an aim to have the fab up and running in 2013.
Toshiba is building a new NAND flash memory plant to cope with rising mobile demand, according to claims by a Japanese business paper. The Nikkan Kogyo understood it would be the second piece of a fifth plant in Yokkaichi whose future had previously been in doubt over the tough Japanese economy. Construction would start in the summer with an aim to have the new factory running in 2013.
SanDisk on the other hand
send out a warning to investors that demand for its flash memory components is falling, and lowered its first-quarter sales projections from $1.3 billion in January to $1.2 billion.
The lowered projection comes at a time when the global memory industry is seeing dropping prices, largely due to slowing demand from selected customers and overproduction issues causing a surfeit of components in the channel.
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From SanDisk and Toshiba's differing reactions to the current market, it's plain to see that things are in flux. Growing interest in mobile devices, the majority driver of demand in the NAND flash market, is on the one hand promising massive growth; early overproduction and slow growth from anyone who isn't Apple and Samsung, on the other hand, is causing short-term problems.
