Intel Corporation’s spokespersons said on Monday that the company plans to raise their prices on flash memory chips in January next year because the demand on such type of memory is very high, and the company can benefit from it. According to various sources, the increase in price can be from 20% to 40% what is very significant.

Given that the new types of mobile phones, set-top-boxes, PDAs and a lot of other compact devices that require to storage data, all utilise flash memory, the industry will not be able to cease buying the mentioned chips from the major suppliers.

I want to point out that Intel and AMD sell more flash memory than any other flash makers in the world. Therefore, if the biggest players start to raise the prices, they both will benefit from it, while another companies involved in flash business will have to follow them. Keeping in mind the current situation on the hardware market, I do not think any company will hesitate about raising the prices. On the other hand the great raises in prices do not happen in one day, all the flash makers have to consider this step thoroughly. For instance, AMD still looks through all the pros and cons of the decision and states that they form the prices according to the market conditions for the time being.

Note that AMD benefits from the flash memory price increase even more than its Santa Clara, California-based rival since Intel only earns 8% of its revenue selling flash memory, while Advanced Micro Devices earns approximately 30% of the sales supplying the memory chips to their clients.