Truthfully speaking, NAND flash is probably the hottest memory technology around and even if there already are quite a few PMPs using flash for storage, this is nothing compared to what we’re heading for. According to an iSuppli survey, the flash memory usage will increase 25 fold up until 2011. Overall it seems that iSuppli is expecting the PMP market to grow drastically the upcoming years, including the number of harddrive-based players, but just barely. It expects that 150.2 million PMPs with flash storage will be sold in 2011, compared to 5.9 million in 2006.
In 2007 the sales of flash-based players expected to increase from 5.9 million 54.8 million. The year 2007 will be the year when flash will dethrone mechanical harddrives, which in turn is expected to sell 29.3 million.
The increased storage density and lower prices are the probably the major reasons for these, but also the other more obvious advantages of the technology. You can save both space and power using NAND flash.
“NAND flash costs are nearing a point where makers of MP3 music players can add enough capacity to support video content, which requires significantly more storage than audio,” said Chris Crotty, senior analyst, consumer electronics, for iSuppli. “The average cost of NAND flash memory will decline by 47.1 percent per year from 2005 to 2010.”
