Daaaamn, talk about clout. If DigiTimes' sources are correct, then Samsung, the world's primary supplier of flash memory, just told its non-Apple customers to suck it in favor of a "large batch of orders" it received from Cupertino. The order, is said to be for 50-million "8Gb-equivalent" (we assume they mean gigabyte, or GB) NAND chips "mainly for use in Apple's iPhone." This order follows a June procurement for 25 million of the same chips. In response, Samsung has reportedly told its lesser customers that it would "sharply cut supply" of NAND to them while the order is being fulfilled. The shortage is compounded by Samsung lowering its manufacturing output in April and May in an attempt to reduce oversupply. Still, if these numbers are true (they seem high and DigiTimes can be hit or miss with its Apple source) then the world is about to be awash in iPhone 3Gs come July 11th.

Update: We've given the Gigabits vs. Gigabytes a bit more thought. If it's 50 million 8Gbit chips as stated, they would divide evenly across about 2.1 million 8GB iPhone 3Gs plus another 2.1 million 16GB models. A reasonable production run for Apple's global launch but an order which shouldn't be so taxing on Samsung's production capability.

With the help of some of their new manufacturing processes, SanDisk just doubled the capacity of their existing iNAND flash drive to 16GB. No, you won't be slotting this bad boy into your laptop. Rather, it's an embedded storage solution with SD interface for mobile handsets and the like based on MLC NAND, the faster and more expensive slower and cheaper flavor of flash. Expected for sampling to OEMs/ODMs in Q2 with the iNAND 32GB version coming in the second half of the year.

Samsung has announced that it's now shipping samples of its high-capacity moviNAND embedded flash memory solution, which it says will eliminate the need for for an external memory card slot in some mobile devices, namely cellphones, or give 'em a bit of extra breathing room when used in conjunction with memory cards. The system, currently available in 1GB and 2GB varieties, consists of some NAND flash memory, a multimedia card (MMC) controller, and onboard firmware, with transfer speeds promised to clock in at a speedy 52 megabytes per second. Mass production of the 1GB and 2GB moviNANDs is set to begin later this month, with 512MB and 4GB models rounding out the line-up by the end of the year.

[Via Slashphone]

Remember the HTC Muse Windows Mobile 5.0 multimedia phone? You know, the one with 4GB of NAND storage dedicated to media files as well as dual cameras, including a 2.1 megapixel shooter with flash? Well anyway, DigiTimes is reporting that HTC will be shipping Qtek its version of the Muse, the S300 (not to be confused with Dopod's S300, based on another HTC design called the Star Trek), earlier than expected, as part of HTC's commitment to first release their HSDPA-enabled handsets in European markets. Qtek should be getting their Muses, which also sport 416MHz processors, 64MB of both RAM and ROM, WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM tuners, sometime in the third quarter, according to "market sources." Besides its lack of a keyboard (or even a numberpad, for that matter) and frustrating inclusion of that 240 x 240 display, the Muse looks to us like a pretty hot model, and will certainly give Nokia's N91, Sony Ericsson's W950i, and Samsung's i300 musicphones some strong competition.

[Via the::unwired]

Samsung just laid their 2GB MMCmicro cards on the table. These little slivers of NAND-based flash memory are said to be the "fastest and highest capacity mobile phone" memory cards available... once they uh, actually ship. Come on Sammy, we're still waiting on your 1GB cards to hit the market, not to mention devices which use them before getting too worked up over this, mkay?