Samsung widens gap with Toshiba in NAND flash market

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's top memory chipmaker, increased its NAND flash market dominance in the second quarter, widening its gap with the runner-up Toshiba Corp., industry data showed Wednesday. But prices of NAND flash memory chips, which are used to store data in portable devices such as music players and mobile phones, tumbled to the lowest level in more than two years, according to DRAMeXchange. While the global NAND flash market shrank 9 percent from the previous quarter to US$4.88 billion in the April-June period, Samsung claimed 40.1 percent in the three-month stretch, up 3.9 percentage points, according to the Taiwan-based firm, which gives chip price information and market analysis. Toshiba, the world's second-largest NAND flash memory maker, accounted for 27.9 percent of the second-quarter NAND flash market, it said. Hit by the March earthquake that disrupted production and caused power outages, the Japanese chipmaker lost 7.3 percentage points from the previous quarter. Hynix Semiconductor Inc., South Korea's second-largest chipmaker, toppled Micron Technology Inc. and became the third-largest NAND flash supplier in the second quarter with a 13.1 percent share. Hynix was followed by Micron and Intel Corp., the world's biggest semiconductor maker. While Korean memory chipmakers fared well in the NAND flash market, price declines became severe towards the end of the second quarter. The price of the benchmark 16-gigabit 2Gx8 MLC NAND flash chip slumped 12.2 percent in July from two months earlier to $2.74. The figure is the lowest level since February 2009 and also the first time in 29 months the price fell below $3. Global chipmakers reported lower profits in the second-quarter from the previous year due to weak demand for personal computers and supply glut in the memory chip markets for mobile devices.