SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — The flash memory market was worth about $7.77 billion in 2002 according to market research firm Semico Research Corp.
Semico partitions flash memory sales into a NAND-flash market valued at $2.25 billion in 2002 and a NOR-flash market valued at $5.58 billion in 2002. In 2002 the NAND-flash market was led by Samsung, with $1 billion of sales, followed by Toshiba, SanDisk and Hitachi in that order, according to Semico.
Although the total value was roughly in agreement with the $7.89 billion estimate issued by iSuppli Corp. (see March 11 story) the two research organizations have widely differing estimates of some company's revenue and ranking.
The 2002 NOR-flash market was dominated by Intel, Semico said, with the chip giant scoring almost three times as much sales revenue as second-placed Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
However some of the differences between Semico and iSuppli were large. Semico attributed $671 million of flash sales to Sharp in 2002 whereas iSuppli considered that Sharp had sold $420 million of flash chips. Similarly Semico gave Toshiba's flash sales as $668 million whereas iSuppli's most recent rankings assign $842 million of flash memory sales to Toshiba.
Whereas SanDisk is ranked at number nine in the world in 2002 with flash memory sales of $324 million by Semico, the company does not appear in iSuppli's top sixteen ranking, and the "others" category in which SanDisk would presumably fall is only credited with $25 million of sales in 2002.
Top ten flash memory suppliers in 2002
| 2002 rank |
Company |
2002 sales |
% of market |
| 1 |
Intel |
$2,060 million |
26.5% |
| 2 |
Samsung |
$1,000 million |
12.9% |
| 3 |
AMD |
$710 million |
9.1% |
| 4 |
Sharp |
$671 million |
8.6% |
| 5 |
Toshiba |
$668 million |
8.6% |
| 6 |
STMicro |
$584 million |
8.0% |
| 7 |
Fujitsu |
$524 million |
6.7% |
| 8 |
Mistubishi |
$353 million |
4.5% |
| 9 |
San Disk |
$324 million |
4.2% |
| 10 |
Hitachi |
$258 million |
3.3% |
| -- |
Other suppliers |
$615 million |
0.1% |
| -- |
TOTAL |
$7,767 million |
100.0% |
| Source: Semico, March 12, 2003 |
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