14 DAY TRIAL // Tokyo newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun has just reported that Toshiba is planning to expand its Fab 5 manufacturing facility at the Yokkaichi Operations complex in the Mie prefecture, Japan.
This is a NAND flash memory factory and the move is part of Toshiba’s plan to take the lead as the world’s largest supplier of NAND flash.
For us, the PC enthusiasts, this means that the price for the Toggle-Mode NAND will go down, while its availability will increase.
Increased availability will represent an incentive for premium SSD makers to make even faster drives next year – or, at least, faster than the ones using Intel’s flash.
Currently, Toggle-Mode NAND is the fastest flash memory that you could put in an SSD. Usually, drives with Toggle NAND have much better performance results than even the synchronous SLC-based products.
The price is probably not a big issue for the enthusiast, but an increase in factory output to the level that Toshiba desires will probably translate into an overall flash price slump of around 30% late next year, a price downsize that will also benefit the average PC buyer.
Toshiba’s plan is to dethrone Samsung and to become the company with the biggest share in the NAND Flash market.
Last year, Samsung was first with a 37.3% share of the market, and Toshiba was second with 30.8%. Hynix was third with a share of 12.3%, while Micron was the fourth largest NAND flash supplier with 11.8%. Intel only made it to the fifth place with a 7.7% share at the end of last year.
Samsung has already announced plans to build a $2.3 billion (€1.75 billion) NAND flash facility in China.
If Toshiba wants to surpass that 6.5% advantage Samsung had over it last year, this means that the Japanese giant plans to increase its output of flash with a larger quantity than what Intel has manufactured as a whole during the year of 2011.
Such increase in volume production will certainly lead to a sizable decrease in price. Products from the new line will reach the market in mid-2013.