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