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DRAM usage grows in smartphones: IHS iSuppli

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Supriya Rai
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According to an IHS iSuppli's DRAM Dynamics Market Brief, "The average amount of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in each smartphone shipped worldwide is expected to surge by nearly 50 percent this year, as these advanced cellphones gain greater functionality."

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As per the market research firm, average DRAM content in smartphones will expand to 666 megabytes (MB) this year, up from 453MB in 2011 and 202MB in 2010. The average density of DRAM chips in smartphones also is climbing and becoming more uniform. The 4-gigabit (Gb) chip this year commands roughly a 37 percent share of the DRAM market for smartphones, followed closely by the 8Gb chip configuration with 36 percent.

An even higher-density configuration, the 16Gb, is forecast to take the major share in the years ahead, indicating that DRAM density growth will continue uninterrupted for some time to come. While 16Gb DRAM will account for just 2 percent market share in 2012, its portion jumps to 15 percent next year, overtakes 4Gb and 8Gb by 2013 and 2014, respectively, and then becomes the primary density configuration by 2015, with 56 percent market share.

"As smartphones become more sophisticated, memory usage in the devices continues to rise, not only to satisfy user wants and needs but also to accommodate demands made by ever-more powerful processors and increasingly refined LCD screens. And as memory has increased in smartphones, the industry has moved from a complex world featuring differing memory densities, to a simpler space where phones look increasingly similar from a memory perspective," said Clifford Leimbach, analyst for memory demand forecasting at IHS.

IHS also confirmed a trend of increasing DRAM loading in the devices. None of the smartphone models being analyzed last year had more than 800MB of DRAM. This year, however, all had at least 1,024MB or 1 gigabyte (GB) except for the Nokia Lumia 900 and the Apple iPhone 4S, both of which featured 512MB of DRAM.

The rise of DRAM densities as well as increased DRAM loading in smartphones is matched by even more aggressive growth of another type of memory in smartphones i.e. NAND flash.

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