Market Trends of Japan Semiconductor Memory Industry
NAND Flash Memory is Expected to Have a Significant Growth
• NAND solution continues to be used over the forecast period, driven by smartphones, targeting emNAND flash memories that are known for their uncomplicated structure, high capacity, and low cost. Their typical features are sequential reading, architecture, and high density. NAND flash memories are becoming more popular due to their usage as Solid-State Drives (SSDs) and USB flash drives, which are called flash storage devices.
• With the rise in demand for PCs and smartphones owing to work from home, NAND flash consumption has dramatically increased, much of which is attributed to the growth of the average capacity of smartphones. This is expected to drive the demand for NAND flash, thus influencing the demand for memory packaging.
• Within smartphones, the use of NAND flash for improved data storage has grown in areas such as multi-chip packages (MCP) and package-on-package (POP), high-density embedded storage, and MCPs/POPs and card slots in handsets.
• Moreover, NAND Flash memory is widely used in the automotive segment to store the software and data that power in-vehicle infotainment systems, such as navigation maps, music, and video files. Additionally, these memories are used to store the software and data that powers ADAS features, such as lane departure warning, collision avoidance, and adaptive cruise control.
• As such, the increasing vehicle sales are also positively impacting the market growth. For instance, according to JAMA, new passenger car registrations in Japan increased from 3.45 million in 2022 to 3.99 million in 2023. The increasing sales of passenger cars and the rising demand for advanced vehicles are expected to drive the market demand in the coming years.
Smartphone/Tablet Segment Is Expected to Register a Significant Growth
• Memory storage has become an essential component in smartphones. The demand has been growing exponentially, primarily driven by the average capacity of smartphones. NAND flash memory in smartphones can significantly enhance the performance of web browsing, email loading, games, and even social network sites, such as Facebook. With the increasing adoption of smartphones, companies are adding extra features and applications to differentiate their products from other manufacturers. For instance, manufacturers are integrating gesture control, fingerprint scanners, and GPS features. This boosts the demand for flash memory, which is used as smartphone code storage media.
• Further, major smartphone vendors are launching their flagship models every year, and the memory capacity keeps increasing with each launch. By improving the scaling limits year after year, smartphone manufacturers sell smartphones at a premium by upgrading the memory capacity to boost performance.
• Additionally, the number of photos and videos users take daily through their smartphone cameras is increasing. The size of smartphone photos has grown exponentially as the number of pixels has increased. The growth in high-capacity smartphone applications, including mobile games, is another reason driving higher storage capacity. This trend would continue with the launch of 5G as high-capacity storage is essential to support high-speed communication, AR/VR, AI technology, and high-definition/4K content.
• According to Sk Hynix, the demand for high-capacity storage devices is booming due to the launch of new high-spec products by major smartphone manufacturers, such as Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi. Hence, SK Hynix introduced the world’s first ‘128-layer 4D NAND Flash’ and put it into mass production before the pandemic arrived.
• With 5G wireless communication rapidly increasing, smartphones are expected to increase multifold, increasing the need for the latest models to raise the bar continuously. According to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), the monthly domestic shipment volume of smartphones in Japan amounted to about 490 thousand units in December 2023, increasing from 330 thousand units in the previous month.
