Summary
1. Based on Q3 sales data Samsung and Toshiba continue to hold over 75% of the NAND Flash market. The 3 other players combined ( MIcron, Hynix,, etc) only have approximately 22-23% of the NAND flash market.
2. NAND Flash pricing has stabilized to the up side this quarter after almost doubling in price from the first quarter of this year.
Analysis
1. It is not unreasonable to expect that there will only be minor changes in market share for Q4, and in my opinion Samsung and Toshiba will continue to garner over 75% market share in 2010.
2. Based on the state of the industry there will probably also not be major capacity expansion in 2010 as the NAND flash manufacturers do not want to have a repeat of the pricing war that occurred in Q1 2009 which caused NAND flash manufacturers to lose money.
3. As the president of SanDisk has stated, "NAND flash is a potential $20B market in 2011, but the capital investment required to support this business is over $30B. Until a rational pricing structure is established it will be difficult for NAND flash manufacturers to think of adding capacity.
