Toshiba, SanDisk have Samsung in their sites
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Toshiba expects demand for NAND, widely used for data storage in portable electronics like Apple Inc.'s Pod digital media player devices, to grow by an average 130% a year between 2006 and 2010.
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Sony rivals Toshiba, Sanyo and NEC are working on HD-DVD rather than Blu-ray. Both are designed to have much more storage capacity than the current generation of discs.
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(InfoWorld) - If you're in any doubt that flash memory-based solid-state disks are on a course to quickly replace hard-disk drives in laptop computers, just take a look along the aisles of this year's Computex trade show. Solid-state disks and machines containing them are plentiful at the show, which brings together the world's most important PC manufacturers and component makers with buyers from around the world, and is a good gauge of the direction of the industry. That solid-state disks are replacing hard-disk drives shouldn't come as a total surprise: they're lighter, quieter, use less power and are sturdier than hard drives. The transition is being accelerated by fast price drops in the flash market. For example, an 8GB chip that cost $11.36 at the end of 2006 currently costs $8.47 on the spot market. That's a drop of 25 percent in six months. For example,Â SanDisk debuted its first SSD, a 32GB model, at January's CES but a mere six months on at Computex it's showing a 64GB model. The company says much higher-capacity drives are possible today but will be too expensive for most enterprise users, so it's increasing the capacity of its drives while keeping them at what it considers the sweet-spot of price and storage space. Like SSDs from competitors, the SanDisk drives are offered as drop-in replacements for 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch hard-disk drives and so can be offered by system makers without the need for any modifications. As SSDs become more common the company believes smaller form-factor drives will be used in machines specifically produced for solid-state storage. "The old technology of the hard disk is going to go away from the mobile PC market and be replaced by [solid state] media," said Doreet Oren, director of product marketing at SanDisk's computing solutions division in Israel. Some analysts agree. In a report issued in May, iSuppli said it expects 24 million laptops sold in the fourth quarter of 2009 -- about 60 percent of the anticipated market -- will have flash storage, versus less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2006. Also on show at Computex is a wide range of solid-state disks intended for the industrial sector. Such drives are targeted at military and aviation applications and began replacing other storage methods several years before their entry into the PC market, thanks to the willingness of such customers to pay higher prices. Apacer TechnologyÂ is demonstrating a 128GB industrial SSD that can replace a 2.5-inch hard drive and operate at temperatures between -40 degrees Celsius and 85 degrees Celsius. It will be available in the fourth quarter, and a second version with double the data read speed of 200MbpsÂ will be available in early 2008. Alongside it was a flash-based RAID (redundant array of independent, or inexpensive, disks) drive which has two Compact Flash card slots. The capacity depends on the cards used. It's not only in the SSD arena that storage advances are on show at Computex. Toshiba has the latest in its line of 1.8-inch hard-disk drives, a model that can store 100GB, on show. The drive can be fitted into portable media devices, like the iPod, or ultra portable PCs. Toshiba is also using Computex toÂ unveil its first HD DVD rewriter driveÂ for laptop computers. A single-layer HD DVD-RW disc can store up to 20GB of information, which is just overÂ four times the capacity of an equivalent DVD. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has its 1TB drive that was unveiled at CES and new at the show is a 250GB 2.5-inch drive for laptop computers. The 5K250 includes drive-level encryption and has 56 percent more storage space than its predecessor, the 160GB 5K160. Â
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SanDisk plans to add MP3 players to its product mix in 2005, with the goal of capturing 20% of the Taiwan market, according to the companyâs Taiwan general sales agent Princeton Technology C&amp;C.
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What's next for Toshiba and for HD DVD consumers? The answers may be hidden in Toshiba's own words.
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Massive capacity iPods coming... but not for a few years yet Toshiba has developed what it believes will be a key component of Flash chips capable of storing 100Gb of data. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait four more generations of Flash technology to get it.â¦
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SanDisk (SNDK) is losing money as it battles rivals who also want to sell flash memory, the digital data storage medium for devices like cameras or music players. The war for customers is pushing down prices in the market and it's tougher to turn a profit.
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(InfoWorld) - Toshiba and Micron TechnologyÂ have settled a number of outstanding lawsuits regarding alleged patent infringement and theft of trade secrets related to computer memory chips. Under terms of an agreement announced Friday, Toshiba will purchase some Micron patents related to semiconductor technology and license patents previously owned by Lexar Media, which wasÂ acquired by MicronÂ earlier this year. Toshiba will pay $288 million to Micron in return for the patents and licenses, Toshiba said. The amount is substantially less than the $465 million inÂ compensation awarded to LexarÂ by a California court in 2005. The payment has been on hold since late last year after Toshiba succeeded in having the damages reconsidered andÂ filed an appealÂ seeking to overturn the original guilty verdict. Earlier this year Lexar raised the stakes by asking the U.S. International Trade Commission toÂ bar the importÂ of some of Toshiba's NAND flash-memory chips and products containing them. The ITC action will now be dismissed, along with others at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the California Court of Appeals, Toshiba said. Toshiba became business partners with Lexar when it invested $3 million in the company in 1997 and acquired a seat on its board of directors. According to Lexar's original complaint, Toshiba sat on the board for two and a half years and gained access to the company's product plans and technology, while at the same time working with Lexar rival SanDisk. Â
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TOKYO (CBS.MW) -- Japan&#39;s Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday it has field suit against South Korea&#39;s Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in Japan and the United States, alleging infringement of Toshiba&#39;s semiconductor flash memory patents.
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Cool gadgets from Asia this month also include a new Toshiba laptop equipped for HD DVD-R.
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Sandisk this week announced the addition of new, higher capacity memory cards for mobile phones. The miniSD and RS-MMC card formats will now be offered in capacities as large as 512MB starting in November.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp. will debut today an online video service and a USB flash drive that can carry television programs and videos from a computer for playback on televisions.
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Samsung Electronics is shipping hybrid hard-disk drives that mix conventional magnetic storage with flash memory. The company claims that the system delivers a 70% to 90% cut in power consumption thanks to its ability to use NAND for caching data.
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New cards provide more memory for cameras, cell phones and other consumer devices.
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Toshiba and SanDisk will build a state-of-the-art NAND flash memory factory and share the chips.
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Nov. 30--NEW YORK -- Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. said Monday they will launch digital consumer appliances with highly advanced semiconductors in 2006.
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Newest models use flash memory, have high still-image resolutions.