The analyst said that recent checks lead her to believe there will be a "significantly better than expected" demand for PCs in the beginning of the year -- something she expects will help balance out supply and demand for DRAM.

Toshiba may invest 200 billion yen (US$2.2 billion) to expand production of NAND flash memory by about 40% in April 2010, the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported without citing anyone.

Korea Exchange Bank said on December 20 that the creditors of Hynix Semiconductor will send out invitations to Korean companies Monday (Dec. 21) to seek bids for their combined 28% stake in the chip maker.

Micron Technology has announced that it will voluntarily transfer its stock exchange listing from The New York Stock Exchange to the NASDAQ Global Select Market effective Dec. 30, 2009.

Hynix Semiconductor plans to invest about 2.3 trillion won (about US$2 billion) in its semiconductor business – 1.5 trillion won in DRAM and 800 billion won in NAND flash memory and logic – in 2010, a 130% jump from one trillion won this year.

Hynix is slated to boost its production capacity of NAND flash memory at its 12-inch, Cheongju fab (M11) to 90,000 wafers per month in 2010 from the current level of 45,000 units, according to industry sources.

Samsung Electronics plans to invest around seven trillion won (US$6.05 billion) in its semiconductor business for 2010 - five trillion won in DRAM and two trillion won in NAND flash memory and system LSI, according to industry sources.

"Apple has asked Korean semiconductor makers to produce a certain amount of chips for its digital products, only to actually purchase a smaller volume eventually. The company doesn't make immediate purchases, but waits until chip prices to fall to the level it internally targets..."

Toshiba eked out a small profit in the July-September quarter on cost-cutting and higher sales of memory chips. The electronics company reported a net profit of 100 million yen (US$1.1 million) for the fiscal second quarter, up from a net loss of 26.9 billion yen in the same period a year earlier.

Samsung Electronics, the world's top maker of memory chips and LCD screens, reported on Friday its best ever quarterly net profit on a resurgent memory sector and forecast a strong 2010.

Samsung Electronics will seek to sharply expand sales in its semiconductor sector over the next three years through improved product quality and cost savings, according to the company. It hopes to register US$25.5 billion in revenue from its semiconductor division in 2012, up more than 50% from this year's goal of US$16 billion.

Toshiba has estimated its operating income for the six months ended September 30, 2009 to reach 2 billion yen (US$21.7 million), compared with its earlier projection for a loss. Its net income estimate for the first half has also been revised upward to a loss of 58 billion yen.

The major supplier of NAND flash silicon invested "millions" in Fusion-io, said Fusion-io President and CEO David Flynn, though he declined to give a more specific figure. The two will jointly evaluate technology for new applications of solid-state storage.

"We are encouraged by improved industry fundamentals and our increasingly diversified global markets, which bode well for further growth in Q4 and in 2010," said Eli Harari, SanDisk chairman and CEO.

SanDisk is incorporating the X4 chips into existing storage cards, without any identifying labeling or change in pricing. The fact that it is not immediately passing cost savings on to consumers is a sign of easing conditions in the volatile market.

Kingston Digital, the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology, has announced it has partnered with Spyrus for hardware-based encryption, authentication, and digital content security products.

Micron's recent performance was "a really strong signal" that things have been improving in the chip market, which had suffered from an industry-wide glut that drove prices into the ground, according to an analyst.

"Of course every transition to a new process has its problems," stated one source who requested anonymity. "We just weren't expecting it to be this slow."

Samsung and Hynix sources said strong demand for advanced DRAM or DDR3 chips, has resulted in a price upturn for both DRAM and NAND flash memory chips used in high-end handheld gadgets such as smart phones.

SST (Silicon Storage Technology) has revised its estimates to reflect an improvement in its expected results for the third quarter, ending Sept. 30, 2009.

Micron Technology has reported a narrower loss after an industry glut eased and product prices rebounded. DRAM sales increased 28% from the previous three months, helped by an 8% gain in ASP and a 19% rise in shipments.

Toshiba plans to relocate as many as 700 engineers by October to help cut semiconductor-research spending.

South Korean telecom regulators have approved the sale of Apple's iPhone in a market currently dominated by local handset manufacturers. Officials at KT, the country's number-two mobile service provider, said they plan to start selling iPhones next month.

The organization responsible for Serial ATA has announced the formation of a mini-SATA spec, suitable for small-form-factor SATA drives and mini SSDs. The mSATA connector will still transmit up to 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s SATA signals, but do so in a smaller connector.

In addition to a DRAM recovery, the NOR and NAND flash memory market has been extremely active. The volume of requests for Spansion and Numonyx flash memory has tripled over the last two months.

The SSD market has been one of several factors that have boosted demand for NAND flash memory and, as a result, boosted NAND flash prices, too. While this trend will likely continue to benefit Micron and SanDisk, it is equally likely to work against STEC in the longer term.

Pliant Technology has released its first series of enterprise-class solid state disk (SSD) drives based on a proprietary ASIC design that the company claims can handle - without using any cache - more than twice the input/output operations per second as the top competitive drives.

Word on the street is that Micron is seeking to enter the NOR flash market. Some also speculated that Intel wants to unload its interest in Numonyx.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics said in a disclosure that it is no longer pursuing a plan to purchase SanDisk.

The US International Trade Commission has said it plans to launch an investigation into flash-memory chips in popular products such as Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry Storm, as well as camcorders and laptop computers.

The Flash Memory Summit brought a range of opinions on the state of the NAND industry, scaling, 3-bit-per-cell and solid-state drives (SSDs).

Memory chip makers will offer more sophisticated flash drives for smartphones - technology that will be comparable to the solid-state drives (SSD) found in laptops today.

Eli Harari, founder, chairman and chief executive of SanDisk, made the predications during a keynote. He also warned that the NAND industry is at the "crossroads," as there is a "disconnect" between future capacity requirements and demand.

A technologist from Sun Microsystems has commented NAND vendors are going down the wrong path by racing each other in process technology--at the expense of customer needs. He was also critical of SSDs for servers, saying the emerging technology is still too expensive.

Back-end production capacity will be reduced at a plant in Mie Prefecture, Toshiba's main NAND flash memory production site, and shifted to a subsidiary in Thailand. Some procedures will also be outsourced to a foundry in Taiwan.

Toshiba has said it aimed to expand its energy, healthcare and environment-related businesses as it targets a strong recovery in earnings within the next three years.

Toshiba has slashed a forecast for operating profit and sales next fiscal year made before the global recession drove the company to post its first net loss in seven years. It will also cut capital spending to 1.1 trillion yen for 2009 to 2011, from 1.64 trillion yen in the preceding three-year period.

Toshiba has reported a wider net loss in its fiscal first quarter due to restructuring costs and losses at its chip operations, as the electronics market's uncertain outlook continued to cast a shadow over the firm's earnings.

BTG International has accused several technology giants--including Apple, Dell and Sony--of infringing five patents related to flash memory technology by using chips from Samsung Electronics.