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The global NAND flash market is growing at a CAGR of 10.1 percent to 2019, with market revenue expected to top $49 billion by 2019, according to the research report Global NAND Flash Market 2015-2019. At the same time, lower materials and manufacturing costs are helping manufacturers decrease NAND-flash ASPs.
NAND flash-based storage devices are now considered to have major potential as a new storage medium that can replace magnetic disks and achieve much higher performance when used in enterprise database servers. Many vendors have started developing flash-based solutions with increased storage capacity, with enterprise databases as one of the main applications. The primary factors responsible for the steadily declining ASP of NAND flash are lower raw material and manufacturing costs, and increasing R&D spending by manufacturers. Cheaper units will increase the number of applications for NAND flash, and allow smartphone, SSD, computing device, consumer electronics device, and tablet PC manufacturers to expand their target markets.
3D NAND, which has a much higher storage capacity than 2D NAND, is one of the emerging technologies in the market and is expected to see high adoption over the forecast period, according to the report. Smartphones and tablets are edging-out laptops as the computing platforms of choice. Since these devices come complete with NAND flash on their systems, the adoption of these new devices will foster the growth of the Global NAND Flash market in the next few years.
NAND and NOR technologies each provide specific advantages to end-users-NOR flash is used in applications that require low storage density, high reading speeds, slow write speeds, and a random access interface, while NAND flash is cost-effective, provides increased density, performs fast program operations, and is used in high-storage applications in consumer electronic devices. Market vendors are seeking to capitalize on these benefits, and are now combining these two technologies on a single chip. Researchers say these designs enable the development of advanced and feature-packed consumer electronic products, such as next-generation cellphones and smartphones.
