NAND Flash shipments to triple in 2011

Shipments of NAND flash for tablet devices are projected to reach 1.7 billion Gigabytes (GB) next year, up a phenomenal 296.1% from 428 million GB in 2010. The shipments will continue to climb steadily over the next few years, hitting 8.8 billion GB by 2014, iSuppli forecasts. "Tablets have stolen some cachet from netbooks", said Michael Yang, senior analyst for memory and storage at iSuppli. "And while the tablet segment suffers from some of the same weaknesses as netbooks, devices like the iPad have wowed consumers with their responsiveness and media interaction—due in part to the use of NAND flash for data storage, instead of a traditional hard disk drive." The surge in tablet shipments means that the amount of NAND required will quickly become sizable, memory pricing and forecasts from iSuppli indicate. And as more consumers switch from netbooks to tablets, NAND demand is expected to keep rising. Average density of NAND flash for tablets will reach 28GB in 2010. By 2014, average NAND flash memory density for the devices will reach 65GB.