Spansion Inc. (CODE)

[elephant]

The NOR Flash Market is Headed for Big Changes

June 10, 2009

http://www.glgroup.com/News/The-NOR-Flash-Market-is-Headed-for-Big-Changes-40300.html

Implications

With Spansion moving away from their Wireless business they will have to grow by taking share from other embedded companies like SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc), Winbond, Macronix, ISSI, and others. This will also impact long-time rival Numonyx, the merger of Intel's and STmicroelectronics' NOR flash businesses, and even Samsung.
Analysis

SST's new president, Bertrand Cambou, knows where all the NOR flash bones are buried. As Spansion's former president, he will bring to SST a knowledge of Spansion's strengths and abilities in SST's main market - low-density devices. Nonetheless, SST uses a more costly manufacturing technology than does Spansion, giving Spansion the ability to wrest market share from SST and others by undercutting their prices.

Objective Analysis believes that the NOR market will fade from cell phones and will shrink considerably as a result. This will drive the leading vendors to invade the market niches served by smaller vendors in a market share battle that will drive a number of smaller companies out of the NOR flash business.

Objective Analysis studies the NOR flash market in depth, along with other flash markets. A report on NOR can be found at www.Objective-Analysis.com/Reports.html. This study, "Flash Packaging: What Phone Makers Want and Why" mainly focuses on NOR multichip packages sold into the cell phone market, also investigates other NOR markets and explains their market dynamics.