Samsung Blackouts Could Boost NAND Flash Market

Power outages at several Samsung Electronics Co. fabs may extend the current NAND shortage, potentially boosting prices in the global NAND flash memory market, according to iSuppli. Five of Samsung's NAND-flash production lines and one system LSI line were affected by the blackout, which brought production to a halt. Production was resumed over the weekend, but iSuppli believes the blackout could cause the current NAND market shortage to extend through the first half of August. Also, the delay could adversely impact Samsung's NAND customers—including Apple Inc., which uses Samsung's NAND output for the iPhone and iPod. The affected Samsung fabs account for 35 percent of global NAND wafer output. Samsung was the dominant supplier of NAND flash in 2006, followed by Toshiba and Hynix. Hynix plans to increase its NAND output by 100 percent in the third quarter, which will limit the impact of the Samsung outage by increasing the amount of parts in the market. The shortage was previously forecasted the shortage to evaporate by this time, as memory manufacturers shifted production from DRAM to NAND, according to iSuppli.