Tablet PC consumption of NAND flash is expected in 2011 to soar to 2.3 billion GB, up 382.4% from 476.8 million GB in 2010. Shipments of NAND for tablets will eventually hit 12.3 billion GB by 2014, showing no sign of slowing down in the years to come.
The proportion of NAND flash use among tablets, measured against the total supply of NAND memory, will jump from 4.3% in 2010 to 11.8% in 2011, said the research firm. By 2014, the figure will climb to 16%.
"The bump in NAND consumption among tablets is likely to come from devices such as Apple's iPad as well as a raft of tablet devices powered by the rival Android operating system, expected to hit the market this year," said Dee Nguyen, analyst for memory and storage at IHS. "Together, the iPad and Android-based tablets form one strand of the tablet experience offered by manufacturers – one centering on Internet-based media consumption. For such tablets, internal storage capacity is less an issue because the devices are intended to provide entertainment, not a full PC computing experience."
Average memory densities will range from 27.1GB for non-iPad slates to 41.5GB in the iPad. A second strand of tablet use, Nguyen said, proposes a PC computing experience, replete with the full suite of products from Microsoft and offered on the Windows/Intel platform. Such tablet devices – exemplified by models to come from Lenovo, Samsung Electronics and Hewlett-Packard – come with generally 32-64GB of solid state storage. In an environment of strong NAND pricing, this density range is the highest that can be offered by manufacturers while still maintaining costs, Nguyen indicated.
Nonetheless, because more memory cannot be provided for Windows/Intel tablets without driving the cost out of the sweet spot for pricing, the value proposition they provide is not as compelling as their Apple/Android counterparts, Nguyen said.
Windows-based tablets also lose on another count. Though their rival media-consumption tablets with lower storage requirements means fewer NAND flash shipments, a greater adoption rate by consumers makes up for the difference, so tablets like the iPad end up contributing significantly to NAND consumption by 2012.
Ultimately, the NAND landscape appears to favor entertainment-focused tablets over computing-oriented models. The high density requirements for PC tablets will necessitate higher prices for the devices, which could deter the majority of consumers. Conversely, tablet makers will be pressured to hit the sweet spot in pricing, which will serve to place limits on the amount of flash memory that goes into each unit in order to keep tablet prices low.