Spansion remains world's largest NOR flash supplier

Spansion, the former memory unit of processor maker AMD, retained its position as the world’s largest NOR flash manufacturer in the first quarter of this year. The company was able to achieve sales of $562 million during the quarter, which was up 22% year-over-year and represented a market share of 27.9%.

Intel followed as a close second with sales of $532 million (26.7% market share), which was down 7.1% over Q1 2005 and reflects Intel’s stronger focus on NAND flash - which offers higher write speeds than NOR and is mostly used in flash cards or portable devices such as the Ipod Nano. In contrast, NOR is often used as read-flash device, for example to store an operating system in digital cameras.

The third largest is ST Microelectronics, which saw its NOR revenues jump 38% year-over-year to $327 million. Samsung and SST round out the top-5 with sales of $125 million and $80 million, respectively. Total NOR revenues for the quarter came in at $2.0 billion, up 6.1% from Q1 2005 and down 6.4% sequentially.