By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter

Possibilities are growing that the global NAND flash memory chip market will be balanced earlier than expected as Samsung Electronics clarified its interest in buying SanDisk last week.

The news, which was confirmed by Samsung late Thursday, lifted a 31 percent jump in prices of SanDisk's shares last week on the Nasdaq Stock Market, while Samsung Electronics shares ended its recent weaker moves to turnaround by 1.17 percent.

``Yes, potential anti-trust problems might be issued if the deal is finalized. But most of all, the combination with Samsung and SanDisk could bring the global NAND flash memory industry back into balance,'' Kim Jang-yeol, an analyst at Hyundai Securities said.

``SanDisk, the world's biggest flash memory card maker, holds key patents related to NAND products, while Samsung is the biggest supplier of NAND chips. That means the demand for NAND chips and even direction of the market will be guided by Samsung,'' he said.

Samsung took up 42 percent of the $3.36 billion in the global sales from NAND chips sold in the latest quarter, followed by Japan's Toshiba and Hynix with 27.3 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively, according to a market research firm iSuppli.

The industry is awash in excess NAND flash memory chips, which is being used to store pictures and music on cameras, MP3 players and other pricey portable hand-held gadgets because demand is still weak, hit by a worldwide economic slowdown.

Because consumer spending is suffering from economic woes, all NAND flash chipmakers are feeling the pain with massive supply and inventory dragging down NAND chip prices by more than 40 percent from early this year.

``If Samsung succeeds in acquiring SanDisk at a reasonable price, we believe this will be positive for both the overall memory market and Samsung. We may take this type of M&A activity as a signal of nearing the memory bottom, as industry consolidation is typical of previous bottoms for the memory market,'' CW Chung, Lehman Brothers vice president of Asia technology said.

yckim@koreatimes.co.kr