Toshiba building new NAND flash plant to cope with demand
updated 11:25 pm EDT, Tue April 3, 2012
Toshiba expanding flash production by 2013
Toshiba is building a new NAND flash memory plant to cope with rising mobile demand, according to claims by a Japanese business paper. The Nikkan Kogyo understood it would be the second piece of a fifth plant in Yokkaichi whose future had previously been in doubt over the tough Japanese economy. Construction would start in the summer with an aim to have the new factory running in 2013.
Officials hadn't fully confirmed the plans.
NAND memory is a cornerstone of smartphones and tablets, and has gained extra importance as solid-state drives have taken hold in the MacBook Air and the ultrabook category that it spawned. Although not as large as Samsung in the field, Toshiba is still often considered a source for major companies, sometimes including Apple.
The Japanese firm is often considered one of the most aggressive in pushing flash technology and is planning 19-nanometer manufacturing that could lead to single-chip 128GB memory useful even in the tight spaces of a smartphone.
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iPhone, industry, upgrades/storage, Toshiba, Samsung, MacBook Air, mobile phones, Apple, iPad
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2008
That's exactly where Apple
should be putting some of its reserve cash. Apple needs to make sure that it has sufficient quantities of flash memory for tens of millions of future products. Apple absolutely cannot come up short on such a critical component.