Korea's Samsung and Japan's Toshiba announced on December 3 that they have reached an agreement to cross-license interface specifications and trademarks for their NAND flash memory chips. The agreement is expected to boost the demand for high-end chips, which is estimated to reach US$5 billion by 2010 from US$800 million in 2008, according to Korea Times.

Pursuant to the agreement, Samsung will license the product specifications of its integrated OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND memory chips to Toshiba. Likewise, Toshiba will license the specifications of its single-packed LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND chips to Samsung.

 

In addition, Samsung and Toshiba plan to collaborate on the development and sales of products compatible with proprietary technologies from the two companies. Both Samsung and Toshiba are expected to launch products based on licensed specifications in 2008.