Toshiba close to catching Samsung in NAND share

Toshiba has almost caught Samsung as the leading purveyor of NAND flash. In Q1, Toshiba was only one point of market share behind its Korean rival and licensee.

Toshiba finished the quarter with 35% share, according to DRAMeXchange, while Samsung had 36%.

In September 2007, the then president of Toshiba Corporation,  Atsutoshi Nishida, stated  that the company aimed to overtake Samsung as the world's largest manufacturer of NAND flash.

That was when Samsung had a 45% market share and Toshiba had only 28% share.

Nishida thought that cross-over would be achieved in 2008, but it has taken much longer. This time last year, at the end of Q1 2010, Samsung’s NAND market share was 38.5% and Toshiba’s was 33.8%.

It is thought that Toshiba's early introduction of three-bit-per-cell technology accelerated the closing of the market share gap.

Now 1% separates the company, and Nishida’s prediction could come true except for the fact that Toshiba was recently reported to have told customers that its NAND output would halve in May and June because of earthquake-related production problems.

The total NAND market grew 9.9% in Q1 compared to Q4 to reach $5.36bn.

       Q1 2011 NAND market

                    Rev. $bn          Share %

Samsung       1.941                 36

Toshiba         1.883                 35  

Micron          0.610                 11.4

Hynix            0.574                 10.7

Intel               0.355                   6.6