SAN FRANCISCO—The market for mobile memory chips is expected to grow a modest 6 percent this year to reach $14.9 billion thanks to healthy growth in the markets for smartphones and tablets, according to market research firm
IHS iSuppli.The El Segundo, Calif.-based market watcher currently forecasts that the mobile memory market will grow by a larger 9 percent tp $16.2 billion in 2013 as more smartphone and tablet products requiring higher memory densities come into the marketplace. By 2015, mobile memory revenue will peak at $17.9 billion, according to the IHS forecast.
IHS's mobile memory forecast includes the flash memory segments of NAND and NOR, the NAND sub-segment of embedded multimedia card (eMMC), as well the mobile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) sector.
"The mobile space has been the engine for overall memory growth in the last few years, and it continues to shape and define the success of suppliers participating in the memory market," said Michael Yang, senior principal analyst for memory and storage at IHS, in a statement. "Given the ongoing passion of consumers for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, the outlook for mobile memory remains exceedingly optimistic."
Mobile NAND flash revenue is expected to grow 14 percent this year compared to 2011, reaching $10.5 billion, according to IHS. Mobile NAND flash revenue this year will be 50 percent of the entire NAND market of $21 billion, IHS projects.
Smartphones are the primary driver of NAND flash consumption, especially in memory-hungry Android handsets, whose operating systems require significantly more flash memory than that of their main competitor, the iPhone iOS from Apple Inc., IHS said. Android handsets are projected to consume approximately 54 percent share of overall flash memory usage in the smartphone space, compared to 18 percent for the iPhone,IHS said.
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