It was good news to hear of Intel and Micron's new 8GB flash memory chip, the fastest NAND product to date. More good news on the horizon though: thanks to a substantial price drop of NAND flash memory, we may see cheaper gadgetry hit the market soon.

There are price drops, and then there are uber price drops. In this case, it's an uber price drop. NAND flash memory dropped 75% over the period of 5 months. MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash chips declined as far as US$ 2.23 per chip.

Analyst Warren Lau of Macquarie Securities believes that flash memory prices will remain low for the first half of the year so that means we should enjoy cheaper gadgetry for a few more months.

According to market researcher Gartner, one possibility for the price drop is the popularity of the the iPod and iPhone, both of which use NAND flash memory. Hopefully the price drop also means new iPods and iPhones with larger memories.