Kingston Prepares for Strong Embedded NAND Flash Demand

It appears that the embedded market is seeing some serious movement lately, as various companies are either unveiling new devices or, in the case of Kingston, preparing for increases in product demand.

The embedded market may not get as much attention from the media as the consumer front does, but it is, nonetheless, essential in our everyday lives.

In fact, there is hardly any shop or trade center than does not utilize this sort of systems, so, naturally, hardware makers have special product lines just for them.

Recent development in this segment include such things as AMD's Radeon E6760 graphics and the Intel Celeron B810E and 847E Sandy Bridge CPUs.

Now, it is Kingston's camp that is causing some rustle, as it prepares for what a certain report believes will be a big surge in embedded NAND Flash demand.

Back in 2010, Kingston created a joint venture with Phison Electronics, which makes embedded memory devices for tablets and smartphones.

Currently, the two are working on eMMC-compliant embedded NAND devices and intends to challenge the likes of Samsung and Micron.

For those that don't know, eMMC products, depending on customer needs, can have between one and three NAND chips.

At the moment, Kingston uses around 2 million NAND chips each month for eMMC devices, but that number may rise to 2.5 million during the third quarter of the ongoing year (2011).

Still, the outfit wants to avoid direct competition with the NAND chip producers, so it will stay away, for the most part, from brand-name consumer electronics and handsets, like those from Apple.

Nevertheless, even though it is not aiming high, for now anyway, its eMMC interface products will most likely go through a rapid shipment rise, since demand is bound to surge.

Of course, whether things really do progress this way is something that only time will tell.