Samsung Electronics continued to lead the global NAND flash market in 2012, despite a 4.9% decrease in sales of the memory.

Samsung's NAND flash revenues for 2012 were US$7.29 billion, which gave the vendor a 38.2% share of the global NAND flash market in the year.

Samsung builds NAND flash memory using mainly 21nm process technology, and the company will develop 1Xnm-made chips for its embedded products and SSDs in the first half of 2013.

Second-ranked Toshiba reported US$5.32 billion in NAND flash revenues for 2012, down 14.6% from 2011.

 Toshiba has increased its NAND-chip production using 19nm process technology, and will continue its efforts to develop a newer 1Xnm node in the first half of 2013.

Micron moved up to number three in 2012 with revenues rising 9.7% to US$2.65 billion.Micron has been making significant efforts to grow sales of its embedded and SSD products, allowing the company's ASP to improve and become stable, DRAMeXchange indicated. In addition, sales of 20nm products are set to rise gradually as a proportion of Micron's total NAND flash revenues in the first half of 2013.

SK Hynix fell out of the global top-three NAND flash vendors in 2012, with revenues slipping 10.1% to US$2.26 billion. Hynix captured a 11.9% share of the global NAND flash market in 2012, down from 12.3% in 2011 when the firm was seated in third place.

Hynix currently uses 20nm as the major production node for the manufacture of NAND flash, and the firm is looking to ramp up production using a newer 1Xnm process during the first half of 2013.

By: DocMemory
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