Smartphones becoming the largest flash memory consuming product in 2013

IHS iSuppli predicts that out of six top categories, cellphones as a whole will take up about 24.6% of NAND flash memory this year. Flash storage cards owned the top spot in 2012, but fall to third place behind solid-state drives (20.6%) with 19.7%. USB flash drives (13.5%), tablets (11.4%) and MP3 players (3.4%) round up the top rankings.

According to IHS analyst Ryan Chen, the cellphone business is eclipsing “all other application markets for flash usage [and] is reflective of a widespread transition in technology markets to focus more on mobile platforms like smartphones.”

The leftovers go to camcorders, navigation devices, set-top boxes and others. There is still room for an expanding role in flash memory, IHS forecasts a greater use of cache SSDs to work in tandem with HDDs in ultrabooks and embedded flash solutions in automotive and “smart home” innovations.

Source: PCMag