Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Elpida Memory Inc respectively delivered speeches on the business strategies for their DRAMs designed for smartphones June 25, 2010, in Tokyo.

The speeches were made at MemCon Tokyo 2010, a conference organized by Denali Software Inc. Samsung's business strategies were explained by Sangkuk Kim of Samsung Japan Corp while Elpida's strategies were announced by Yasuo Yoshitomi, executive professional, Mobile & Digital Consumer Division of Elpida Memory.

Both Kim and Yoshitomi predicted that DRAMs for smartphones will shift from the existing LPDDR type to the LPDDR2 type within 2010. Kim said that, in 2011, 20 to 30% of DRAMs for mobile phones including smartphones will be the LPDDR2 type.

Both of them expressed high expectations for smartphones, citing data collected by research firms, etc. Kim referred to research data predicting that the volume of shipments of smartphones will increase 56% in 2010 on a year-over-year basis, far exceeding the expected increase in the volume of shipments of mobile phones excluding smartphones (6%).

Yoshitomi cited research data predicting that the volume of shipments of smartphones will increase from 170 million units in 2009 to more than 400 million units in 2014. The volume of shipments of DRAMs for mobile phones including smartphones is currently 500 to 700 million units (1 Gbit products) and accounts for less than 10% of the entire volume of shipments (10 billion units) in the DRAM market, he said. And he expects that the percentage will drastically increase due to smartphones.

High-speed, low-power consumption DRAMs are required for smartphones, and the LPDDR2 DRAMs will meet such a requirement, Kim said. In the case of the existing LPDDR type, the voltages of the interface (I/O) and the inside are both 1.8V. But the LPDDR2 type supports a voltage of 1.2V and is expected to have a data transmission speed of 800-1066Mbps per terminal at first.

According to Samsung's sales plan for the LPDDR2 DRAMs, the company will start shipping 46nm-class 2-Gbit samples in the quarter ending in June 2010. Because a smartphone is normally mounted with 512-Mbyte to 1-Gbyte DRAM, 4Xnm-class 2-Gbit products will come with two to four DRAM chips. Samsung plans to ship 3Xnm-class 4-Gbit samples in the quarter ending in March 2011 and 3Xnm-class 2-Gbit samples in the quarter ending in June 2011.

Yoshitomi predicts that smartphones mounted with the LPDDR2 DRAM will hit the market in the winter of 2010. Elpida announced 4Xnm-class 2-Gbit DRAMs for mobile phones in May 2010, seemingly intending to make a shift to the LPDDR2 DRAM within 2010 like Samsung.