NAND Continues to Set Records, Semico Says

Electronic News reports that "digital consumer applications are driving the NAND market to grow faster than any market in the history of the semiconductor market, according to Semico Research. Semico recently increased its "2006 forecast from $11 billion to $13 billion, or a 25% jump over 2005’s revenues of $10.2 billion."

Jim Hand at Semico said, “One thing is clear about the NAND market, it is hard to over-forecast! Suppliers who ramped their capacity aggressively early in the year are finding that they need to add still more to even start to satisfy demand."

The article detailed some of the ways the various players in the industry were trying to increase supply and match demand.

Handy concluded that “Major NAND users, OEMs like Lexar Media, Kingston, Viking Technologies; camera companies, like Nikon, Olympus, Kodak, Canon, & Fuji Film; MP3 Player companies like Apple, Creative, and Sony, and some of their suppliers like SigmaTel and Silicon Motion, are faced with supply constraints that are forcing prices up and causing demand to be tight."