2011 CES: Booming tablet PC market will help stimulate NAND Flash demand

TAIWAN: According to DRAMeXchange, the research department of Trendforce, during the 2011 International CES, vendors gravitated toward the concept of enhancing work efficiency and quality of life through the help of prevalent connectivity of smart devices. They launched series of smart TV, tablet PC, digital home products. Tablet PCs especially draw a lot of attention during the show.

Impressed by the sales number of iPad, manufacturers accelerated their development of non-iPad tablets in 2010. Non-iPad tablets manufacturers were not limited to traditional PC brands, but also mobile brands, TV brands and consumer electronics brands, and similarly they all introduced tablets build with Android O.S. and ARM-based SOC (system on chip) processor.

More than 60 tablets were introduced at CES. As the android O.S. gradually becoming mature, non-iPad tablets are gaining popularity with manufacturers ramp up non-iPad tablet production.

Despite the original PC experience offered by PC brands, mobile brands and TV brands aim to fortify the product positioning of tablets through enhancing mobile device position and offering home digital devices experience as well. Most of these new tablet PCs will be available on the market in 2Q11.Source: DRAMeXchange.

DRAMeXchange estimates the overall tablet PC market will scale up to 52 to 55 million units, and will see a big leap from the 15 million units shipped in the previous year. iPad will continue to lead, taking 65 to 70 percent of market shares.

We will find over 95 percent of tablet PCs with built-in NAND Flash as its major storage media, implementing the prevalent eMMC or SSD, their capacity ranged from 8 to 32GB. DRAMeXchange expects 2011 NAND Flash consumption from tablet PCs will surge about 5 percent to 10 or even 11 percent in 2011.

NAND Flash growth is the highest among other embedded storages. Thus, the booming tablet PC market will have a positive effect on the NAND Flash industry and will likely to help stabilize the price and increase output consumption.Source: DRAMeXchange.