Phison Electronics aims to ship 450 million NAND flash device controller ICs in 2010 to become one of the world's two largest suppliers, chairman Khein Seng Pua said at a recent company investors conference.
Phison's controller business will stay focused on SSDs, while also gearing up to tap new applications including eMMC memory devices.
Phison's controller shipments totaled 220 million units in the first half of 2010, almost equal the 240 million shipped in 2009, the company revealed. In the second quarter, it shipped 79.6 million controllers for flash memory cards and 31.3 million for drives. Controllers to the embedded memory and SSD segments accounted for a small portion of Phison's total shipments in the second quarter.
Phison expects to ship 150 million memory device controller ICs in the third quarter, up from about 110 million in the second.
In addition, Phison will step into the production of eMMC NAND devices, with China-based white-box vendors to be target clients in order to avoid competition with its chip suppliers including Samsung Electronics, Hynix Semiconductor and Toshiba, Pua pointed out.