Friday, May 26, 2006
Memory supplier Spansion LLC retained its position as the leading supplier of NOR-type flash memory in the first quarter, according to preliminary market-share data from iSuppli Corp.
According to iSuppli (El Segundo, Calif.), Spansion (Sunnyvale, Calif.) achieved first-quarter NOR sales of $562 million, down 6.5 percent from $601 million in the fourth quarter of 2005.
Trailing Spansion was Intel Corp. with revenue of $537 million, down 10.5 percent from $600 million in the fourth quarter. Europe’s STMicroelectronics remained in third place with revenue of $327 million, a 2.4 percent decline from $335 million in the fourth quarter.
"Revenue for each of the top-three NOR suppliers was lower in the first quarter than it was in the fourth. However, this was not unexpected because it reflects normal seasonal sales patterns in the NOR market,"said Mark DeVoss senior analyst, flash /SRAM/MCP for iSuppli. Still, several companies, such as Micron Technology Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. saw sequential growth in NOR flash memory sales, iSuppli said.
The firm added that NOR flash suppliers, stung by revenue declines in 2004 and 2005, have shied away from adding capacity, instead focusing on migrating to finer pitch lithography, increasing production of two-bit-per-cell flash technologies, and entering foundry support agreements for producing legacy technology products.
Some of the strategies have been in response to the growing popularity of NAND flash, increasingly finding its way into mobile phones.
Still, iSuppli believes increasing demand for flash memory for mobile phones and other electronic devices could produce NOR flash shortages later in 2006.
By: DocMemory
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