"Booming sales" of memory cards predicted

Forecasts look bright for flash memory

View more images

10 August 2009 11:40 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Global sales of flash memory are due to skyrocket, if predictions from market research company iSuppli are accurate. The firm reckons that sales will increase six-fold between 2008 and 2013 as sales of high-end smartphones increase.

"Soaring sales of smartphones, combined with the increasing density of NAND Flash in each handset, is causing sales of the memory in this area to boom" said Michael Yang, senior analyst for mobile and emerging memories at iSuppli.

The company pins the iPhone as the source of the boom, spurring the growth of the smartphone market and fuelling consumer demand for more storage on mobile handsets. The expansion of smartphones into the third world is another important source of growth.

iSuppli predicts that the average amount of memory in all mobile phones shipped worldwide will hit 6GB per handset in 2013, up from less than 1GB in 2008. Revenue forecasts for 2013 are predicted to hit nearly $1 billion.

Read