Samsung increases NAND flash lead

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in the second quarter managed to capitalize on strong conditions in the NAND flash memory market to pad its sales lead over Toshiba Corp., according to iSuppli Corp. The South Korean electronics giant's global NAND flash memory revenue amounted to $1.4 billion in the second quarter, up 18.9 per cent from $1.2 billion in the first quarter. This gave Samsung a global NAND market share of 45.9 per cent, up nearly two points from 44.1 per cent in the first quarter. Samsung's robust increase in NAND sales, combined with a relatively weak performance by Japan's Toshiba, gave it an 18.4 percentage point market-share lead over its Japanese rival, up from 13.4 points in the first quarter. With an 18.9 per cent increase in revenue, Samsung handily outgrew the overall NAND market, and outperformed its two closest competitors, Toshiba and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of South Korea.