Toshiba narrows gap with Samsung in NAND flash market

SEOUL, July 10 (Yonhap) -- Toshiba Corp., Japan's largest chipmaker and the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips, reduced its gap with Samsung Electronics Co. in NAND flash memory during the first quarter, according to an industry report Sunday.
Samsung, which has been the world's leader in the NAND flash memory market for more than eight years, claimed 35.9 percent of the flash memory market during the first three months of this year, IHS iSuppli said in a report.
Toshiba was a close runner-up with a 35.6 percent share in the three month period, it said.
NAND flash memory chips are used to store data and files in smartphones, tablet computers, digital cameras and audio players.
While Samsung's NAND flash revenue rose 13.8 percent on year to US$1.91 billion in the three-month stretch, Toshiba's revenue jumped 28.5 percent to $1.89 billion, iSuppli said.
As a result, the gap in the market share between the two companies narrowed to 0.3 percentage points in the January-March period, compared with 1.1 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to the market researcher.
"While both companies are growing their NAND flash business, Toshiba expanded somewhat faster during the period," the market research company said in the report.
"However, Samsung very likely will try to regain any lost market share or momentum for the rest of the year, IHS believes, given that the company has occupied the top NAND spot for more than eight years."
U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. was a distant third with a 11.1 percent share.
ISuppli said Samsung retained its dominance in the first-quarter mobile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market, commanding a 48.2 percent market share with $1.1 billion in revenue.
Hynix Semiconductor Inc. based in Icheon, South Korea, was the second-largest mobile DRAM maker in the first quarter with a 24.3 percent market share, closely followed by Japan's Elpida Memory Inc., which accounted for a 22.4 percent share.
ylee@yna.co.kr
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