Digicams, music players boost flash memory mkt

SEOUL: Global sales of flash memory chips used in digital cameras and music players rose 6.2 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter as competition intensified, a U.S. research firm said.

El Segundo, California-based iSuppli Corp. said flash chip sales stood at $4.3 billion in the April-June period.

"The race for leadership in the flash memory market became tighter in the second quarter," iSuppli said in a report. "In the second quarter, the market share difference between the No.1 and No.4 flash-memory supplier amounted to just 7.5 percentage points, compared to 13.3 percentage points in the first quarter."

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. captured the most sales, $907 million, despite a 4.6 percent decline from the previous quarter. Samsung's market share of 21.2 percent was down from 23.6 percent in the first quarter, it said.

Japan's Toshiba retained its second-place ranking with revenue of $740 million. Its sales were 2.6 percent lower in the quarter, and its market share declined to 17.3 percent from 18.8 percent in the first quarter.

Spansion, a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Fujitsu Ltd., ranked third with revenue of $673 million, up 7.2 percent. Its market share edged up to 15.7 percent from 15.6 percent.

Intel ranked fourth but narrowed the gap with a 41 percent jump in sales, to $587 million. Its market share rose to 13.7 percent from 10.3 percent.

Flash chips do not need power to retain their data, unlike memory chips in computers, and so are ideal for removable storage. The market has boomed along with sales of digital cameras and keychain-sized USB drives for transferring data between computers.