Absolutely the Last Post About the Flash iPod Mini...For This Week At Least

By now everyone and their mother knows Apple is purportedly buying 40 percent of Samsung's NAND Flash memory output for the rumored 4GB flash-based iPod Mini. Responsible for creating all the fuss is iSuppli analyst Nam Hyung Kim, who issued a report about the deal.

BusinessWeek picks up the story and another tidbit is that according to Nam, Apple is actually trying to secure even more Flash memory from Samsung competitor Hynix. However, while most people assume Apple's move is to make changes in the iPod line, Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies thinks Apple might have a surprise up its sleeve.

"The Shuffle has been a pretty big hit. There's a perception that a 1-gigabyte player is a bit small, and so Apple has to be looking at a higher-density flash-based player. But it's really hard to anticipate Apple's actions. They may be using all this flash memory for something else," he said.

WebProNews adds to the BusinessWeek article and provides comments from Gartner analyst Joseph Unsworth that were made in a Red Herring article. According to Unsworth,"Samsung has 55% of the [NAND Flash] business and Apple's got 40% of that." He stated "That's an awful lot of Flash." Unsworth believed Apple would get a "big discount" allowing them to lower prices and deliver "improved versions of this iPod for $199."