Toshiba produces large-capacity NAND chips

On January 24, Toshiba said it would compete with rival Samsung in the field of NAND flash chips with products with large storage capacity.

Expected in March, Toshiba will launch the first 2GB NAND flash chip model of the NAND storage industry. About a month later, the company will continue to release models with larger storage capacity.

The model of Apple's iPhone music player using the new NAND chip was announced on January 9, 2007.

Samsung is currently the world's largest NAND maker, followed by Toshiba. Meanwhile, Toshiba aims to occupy about 40% of the NAND market share with its SanDisk partner in 2008.

Analysts say Toshiba's latest competitive claim stems from the growing demand for NAND hard drives when it launches a shocking iPhone device with two 4GB and 8GB NAND drives .

Toshiba's upcoming 2GB NAND flash chip will use 56-nm processing technology. The company expects to produce around 300,000 products in April 2007.

Toshiba also hopes to begin mass production of 1GB NAND chips, using 56-nm technology, later this month.