With plans to introduce a new version of the iPod Mini, Apple Computer will buy 40 percent of Samsung’s flash-memory output.The partnership was made in anticipation of holiday sales of a 4-GB version of Apple’s iPod Mini digital-music player that will employ a flash-memory drive rather than a traditional micro disk drive.
Already the supplier of 1-GB flash drives for the iPod Shuffle, Samsung reportedly wooed Apple from other flash-memory suppliers by providing price breaks for the company.
Improved Quality
The transition to flash memory is a significant shift, said Yankee Group analyst Nitin Gupta. Although flash-memory drives often cost twice as much as traditional disk drives, their memory density allows for smaller devices, increased battery life and more durable storage.
And because flash-memory drives have no moving parts, they also avoid skipping, stutters and the kind of mechanical failures that can plague traditional disk drives.
“The user experience is far superior,” Gupta said of flash’s advantage over traditional disk storage. However, the possibility of the higher-capacity iPods transitioning to flash memory is low. Flash memory chips with a capacity in excess of 10 GB become too expensive to warrant widespread use.
Because most consumers typically are not aware of whether a digital-music player employs a hard disk or flash memory, “Apple will market the features, not flash,” said Gupta.
“I have no doubt other Apple products [using flash drives] will appear in the fourth quarter,” Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said.
Shrinking Supply?
Gupta agrees flash might be used in other Apple products, but disagrees with a Reuters report that Apple’s large purchase will shrink the world supply of flash memory.
South Korea-based Samsung controls 55 percent of the global flash market and is the world’s largest producer of NAND flash memory, an advanced kind of flash that drastically increases the memory density possible for this format.
Apple surprised analysts in June by announcing it had shipped 6.2 million iPods in the third quarter. Currently, the iPod owns roughly 80 percent of the U.S. market for digital-music players.
Earlier this week, however, heavyweight Sony unveiled its newest digital Walkman, dubbed the Bean, to go head to head with Apple in this market. Sony’s Beans are positioned to compete directly against Apple’s iPod Shuffle.
