While it's good news that Intel and Micron introduced the fastest NAND flash memory chip to date, there's more good news on the horizon. A substantial decline in the price of NAND flash memory has gadget companies in a race to bring forward tech with larger storage capacities and lower pricetags. Details in the full article.

If you ask Seagate, news of the impending death of hard drives (caused by the impending domination of NAND-type flash memory chips) is grossly exaggerated. Otherwise, the company wouldn't have announced its big plan for 2007, which includes 60 to 120GB drives for handheld video devices such as Apple's iPod video.

In an interview with Business Week, Seagate expressed faith in hard drives despite prediction that HD technology will give way to high-capacity flash memory. The company cited that the big three NAND flash memory makers in the world (Samsung, SanDisk, and Toshiba) are investing big money on their respective disk-drive business with no plans of shelving them .

Seagate believes HD will be around for a long time because they are cheaper. Seagate CEO William Watkins said, "It will be a price-per-gigabyte battle...if they can make a 4-GB for $5, then it's $20 for 32 GB, and $40 for 64 GB. On the other hand... when we do a single-platter, 100-GB notebook drive, well it doesn't cost me very much to go to 200 GB. All I have to do is add another platter. It's very cheap for me to go up."

We don't want to alarm you but according to research firm Gartner, the launching of the a flash-based iPods with 10GB to12GB later this year could cause a shortage of NAND flash memory. Gartner predicts a shortage of flash supply of 5.8% by the 4th quarter. Previously, the research firm predicted a shortage of approximately 3-4%. "We're expecting a more severe shortage," said Gartner.

The existence of the said iPod model has not been confirmed by Apple, but according to a top exec of an iPod manufacturer, the company is close to unveiling the next generation of itsiPod featuring a "none-touch" concept. It is also not known if the new iPod will feature more than 4GB of flash. Nevertheless Gartner thinks handheld music players led by Apple's iPod will drive growth of the NAND flash market in the second half of this year. 

But there's really no reason to panic. We think civilization as we know it will survive the Great Flash Memory Depression of 2006.