The Global NAND Flash Market is growing at a CAGR of 10.1 percent from 2014-2019, with market revenue expected to top US$49 billion by 2019.
Technavio analysts have narrowed down the top trends in the NAND flash market that are expected to help drive this market growth through the forecast period.
Decline in Average Selling Price (ASP) of NAND Flash
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.
Emergence of 3D NAND
3D NAND—which has a much higher storage capacity than 2D NAND—is one of the emerging technologies in the market which is expected to see high adoption over the forecast period.
The information in 2D NAND is stored in a 2D array, whereas in 3D NAND the information can be stacked to have high memory density. The majority of vendors such as Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk have already started investing in the market which is expected to fuel the adoption of 3D NAND during the forecast period.
Development of New Computing Platforms
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.
Convergence of NAND and NOR Flash Technologies
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. These designs enable the development of advanced and feature-packed consumer electronic products, such as next-generation cellphones and smartphones.
Increased Adoption in Enterprise Databases
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.
Evolution of Signal Processing Technology in NAND Flash Market
Signal processing is emerging as a way to bridge the gap between application needs and the limitations of NAND flash, which has paved the way for the development of next-generation NAND chips. These methods are used to reduce the physical limitations of NAND flash, exploiting their unique nature and structure.
