Intel and Micron shrink NAND flash
Companies hope to bring more storage capacity to tablets and smartphones — Intel and Micron Technology on Thursday said they had shrunk NAND flash memory in size, which could help add more storage and features to smartphones or tablets.
Context & Ripple Effects
The shrink lands two weeks after Intel and Micron refreshed their consumer solid-state drive line on a 25nm process and cut SSD 320 prices by up to 30% while doubling capacities — so this is a continuation of the same node roadmap, pointed at a new target: phones and tablets rather than PCs.
For Intel specifically, mobile storage is part of a broader push into handsets — reports circulating days earlier said Intel designed a smartphone that China's ZTE might manufacture, though that remains unconfirmed. Denser NAND gives Intel and Micron's joint venture something concrete to sell into that market even if Intel's own silicon has yet to win handset designs.
First-order effects
- Smartphone and tablet makers sourcing from the Intel-Micron joint venture get smaller NAND dies, freeing board space or raising per-device capacity without a larger footprint.
- The move extends the price-per-gigabyte pressure Intel started with its March SSD price cuts into the mobile component market, where every gigabyte saved matters more.
Second-order effects
- Samsung and Toshiba, the other major NAND suppliers, face matching process shrinks to hold their positions in phone and tablet sockets, keeping capital spending high across the industry.
- Device makers gain leverage in component negotiations as suppliers compete on density, reinforcing the pattern where each node transition resets per-gigabyte pricing.
Third-order effects
- Planar cell shrinks cannot continue indefinitely; if this cadence holds, the industry's route to further capacity growth will have to shift toward stacking or other structural changes, making the long-term cost curve of NAND harder to predict than the steady historical decline.
- Storage density becoming a competitive differentiator for phones and tablets pushes memory further from commodity status toward being a design input, alongside processors and displays, in flagship device planning.
The trend: NAND suppliers are racing down process nodes to feed surging mobile demand, tying smartphone and tablet capacity roadmaps directly to fab economics.