The flash memory market is abuzz as Korean news sources, along with Reuters and Bloomberg, are reporting that Samsung Electronics is thinking about buying SanDisk. A Samsung spokespersn, James Chung, said: "We are considering various opportunities regarding SanDisk but nothing has been decided.""
Korea-based Samsung is the world"s largest NAND Flash memory maker and it pays KRW400bn ($351m) each year in royalties to SanDisk. The Asus Eee PC and the Apple iPhone, for example, use Samsung flash chips. SanDisk owns Flash memory patents and makes Flash-based MP3 players, memory cards and solid-state drives (SSDs). It posted poor results at the end of July, with an unexpected Q2 loss of $68m compared to a $28m profit in the year-ago quarter.