NAND flash sales in 2013 pushed by smartphones, tablets and SSDs

IC Insights has reported smartphones to account for 26% of the $30.0 billion NAND flash memory market in 2013. (The NAND flash market is forecast to grow 12% in 2013 from $26.8 billion in 2012). According to data from IC Insights’ 2013 IC Market Drivers Report, approximately 56% of total cellphone shipments in 2013 (975 million of 1,745 total shipments) are forecast to be smartphones, up from 750 million or 42% in 2012 and 30% in 2011.
Another high-volume application for flash memory in 2013 as per IC Insights is solid-state drives, which are built with high-density NAND flash chips and feature standard mass-storage interfaces that are found on hard-disk drives. SSDs are forecast to account for 13% of NAND flash memory sales this year, as per IC Insights. IC Insights explains "SSDs are built in form-factor sizes that are identical to hard-disk drives (such as 1.8- and 2.5-inch modules) so they can be easily plugged into existing PC and notebook designs. In recent years, SSD-storage capacity has quadrupled annually, and now it appears that solid-state drives are becoming serious challengers to conventional hard-disk storage in portable computers. Recently, SSD-storage solutions have gained favor in large server computers, which stand to benefit from the fast...