Winbond Electronics has made additional ground with its NOR flash memory. The company's serial flash products have been adopted for Microsoft's Surface Pro, according to iFixIt's teardown of the new Surface tablet.

In addition, Winbond with its NOR flash chips entered the supply chain of Apple in 2012, industry sources claimed. Winbond is also among the NOR flash suppliers to Samsung Electronics, the sources said.

Market watchers believe that Winbond will likely return to profitability as early as the second quarter of 2013, thanks to a more favorable cost structure and product mix.

Sales of NOR flash accounted for 45% of Winbond's overall revenues in the fourth quarter of 2012, followed by niche-market DRAM with 44% and mobile DRAM with 11%. Meanwhile, NOR flash chips built using a newer 58nm process already accounted for 20% of Winbond's total flash revenues in the fourth quarter.