Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
A report on the Korea Economic Daily, quoting an unnamed Samsung official, speaks of a contract that is to be signed during the first half of this year and exceed Samsung’s sales contract with Apple. Sony will be using the chips for its MP3 players—The Inquirer speaks of a 8GB one.
Samsung said the flash deal [...]
CES 2006: SanDisk announces the 1GB microSD card: it’s the world’s smallest 1GB flash memory card. First ones to enjoy this card, which goes by a suggested retail price of $120, will be Verizon’s V Cast customers.
Sony expected to release 4 and 8GB Memory Stick PRO Duo in 2006. [via]
Apple secures flash memory supplies till 2010 (and leaves no doubt as to who 0wnz the market now): “Apple on Monday announced that it has reached long-term supply agreements with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba to secure the supply of NAND flash memory through 2010.” Apple will prepay its suppliers $1.5Bn in the [...]
Samsung to strike (yet another) huge deal with Apple: According to a Korean news provider, “by the end of November, Samsung is expected to sign a long-term, several hundred million dollar contract with Apple to supply flash chips for its iPod digital music players”.
This is not to be confused with the $3.8Bn join investment plan [...]
Apple going for third memory supplier: Samsung and Toshiba, its main flash memory suppliers, to be joined by South-Korea based Hynix Semiconductor. The manufacturer will take over the 512MB/1GB chips (used on the iPod shuffle).
Side-fact: things to get better for memory chips’ supply and demand in December.