Josephine Lien, Taipei; Steve Shen

 

Memory module vendor Kingston Technology expects brisk shipments of its flash products such as SD cards in the coming months, with order visibility for the entire segment extended to September, according to Nathan Su, Flash Memory Sales Director of Kingston APAC.

Kingston saw its shipments of NAND flash products in the Asia Pacific area grow 30% sequentially in July thanks to aggressive pricing, but shipments to the region are expected to stay flat in August due to congestion at customs in Shenzhen, China, where the 2011 Summer Universiade is being held, Su noted.

SSD applications currently account for 10% of Kingston's total shipments of NAND flash products in Asia Pacific, and those for eMMC applications in smartphone take up 3-5%. The introduction of ultrabooks is likely to drive up sales of SSD products soon.

Kingston also expects its shipments of SD cards to grow several-fold in September as compared to the level recorded in August thanks to orders from the OEM sector. The development of high density 32GB to 512GB SSDs will be the killer application for the NAND flash industry in 2012, Su asserted.