iPhone shortage has industry impact

The launch of the iPhone in China is having a significant impact on other parts of the market, particularly the supply of NAND flash memory chips.
Digitimes reports Taiwan-based memory module houses seeing a serious shortage of the chips.
Samsung Electronics has informed Taiwan module makers that it will halve its NAND flash supply to them in September, and Micron Technology has also told some of its downstream customers that no NAND flash chips are available, it says from sources. Toshiba and Hynix Semiconductor are also giving priority to Apple, and are offering limited supply to the spot market, the sources added.
The average spot price of 16Gb multi-level cell (MLC) chips rose 0.85% to close at US$5.17 on September 11, and the 32Gb part was up 0.5% to US$7.13, according to DRAMeXchange. In the contract market, average pricing for 16Gb chips climbed 7.2% to US$4.48 in the first half of September, and 32Gb went up 4.3% to US$6.80.