Michael Johnston
April 28th, 2007, 10:24 PM
<center><img width="200px" border="0" src="http://www.iphonealley.com/images/storyimages/8GBflash.jpg" alt="Samsung flash memory" /></center>
Samsung has recently announced that it has begun shipping samples of an eight gigabyte memory chip to major mobile electronics manufactures.
As you may know, Samsung is one of Apple's largest NAND flash suppliers. Apple products using flash memory are the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and soon to be released iPhone. Currently the largest capacity iPod Nano you can buy contains two 4GB flash chips for a total of 8GB of storage. This announcement from Samsung means that memory in all of Apple's flash-based products could potentially be doubled without changing dimensions of any products.
The good news for 1st Gen iPhone owners is the potential for size increases before the product is shipped. This means having the 4GB model become an 8GB, and the 8GB model a hefty 16GB. Very good news indeed.
In spite of this good news, it seems Samsung may have issues supplying Apple with a sufficient quantity of memory modules. According to <a href="http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20070426PD220.html">Digitimes</a>, Apple is putting a greater demand on Samsung than expected and is asking for 400-500 million 4Gbit flash chips. Allegedly this is 10-15% more than the two parties had initially agreed to and Samsung is worried it may not have the capacity to fulfill Apple's demand in such a short amount of time. Additionally, Samsung is also worried that if the demand for the iPod and iPhone isn't as great as Apple suspects, they may end up with more chips than they can sell.
Some may remember that back in January 2006 when the MacBook Pro was first announced, the initial processor speed quoted was increased before the first units started arriving and gave early adopters a nice surprise. Of course, with the iPhone being such a great device to watch video content on, it would be nice to see larger capacities. I guess we'll know more in June when the iPhones start rolling out.
Samsung has recently announced that it has begun shipping samples of an eight gigabyte memory chip to major mobile electronics manufactures.
As you may know, Samsung is one of Apple's largest NAND flash suppliers. Apple products using flash memory are the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and soon to be released iPhone. Currently the largest capacity iPod Nano you can buy contains two 4GB flash chips for a total of 8GB of storage. This announcement from Samsung means that memory in all of Apple's flash-based products could potentially be doubled without changing dimensions of any products.
The good news for 1st Gen iPhone owners is the potential for size increases before the product is shipped. This means having the 4GB model become an 8GB, and the 8GB model a hefty 16GB. Very good news indeed.
In spite of this good news, it seems Samsung may have issues supplying Apple with a sufficient quantity of memory modules. According to <a href="http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20070426PD220.html">Digitimes</a>, Apple is putting a greater demand on Samsung than expected and is asking for 400-500 million 4Gbit flash chips. Allegedly this is 10-15% more than the two parties had initially agreed to and Samsung is worried it may not have the capacity to fulfill Apple's demand in such a short amount of time. Additionally, Samsung is also worried that if the demand for the iPod and iPhone isn't as great as Apple suspects, they may end up with more chips than they can sell.
Some may remember that back in January 2006 when the MacBook Pro was first announced, the initial processor speed quoted was increased before the first units started arriving and gave early adopters a nice surprise. Of course, with the iPhone being such a great device to watch video content on, it would be nice to see larger capacities. I guess we'll know more in June when the iPhones start rolling out.