Counterpoint: The average capacity of NAND flash memory built into mainstream smartphones will exceed 100GB in 2020

NAND flash capacity has become one of the most important considerations for consumers when purchasing a new smartphone. Advances in cameras, application processors (APs), and displays have stimulated increased storage demand for video, image, and other multimedia applications. As a result, NAND capacity has shown significant growth in smartphones. According to Counterpoint's latest report on smartphone memory, the average capacity of smartphone NAND flash memory exceeded the 100GB mark for the first time in 2020.

However, there are differences in iOS and Android phones. In iOS phones, the average NAND capacity reached 140.9GB in the fourth quarter of 2020, while the average capacity of Android phones in the same period was 95.7GB. But this gap is narrowing. As can be seen from the figure below, the average capacity of Android phones has been growing rapidly in the past few years. In 2020, the average capacity of iOS and Android phones increased by 5.6% and 20.5%, respectively.

Appendix 1: Comparison of average NAND flash memory capacity of global iOS and Android smartphones

Data shows that Apple did not innovate in storage size, but chose to stick with the maximum 512GB NAND, which is its highest storage capacity since 2018. On the other hand, Samsung, the largest Android OEM, wanted to maximize storage capacity and launched the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus with 1TB NAND in 2019. All of this led to iOS having a lower storage growth rate than Android in 2020.

According to the 2019-2020 Q1-Q4 mobile phone sales tracking data, the average NAND flash memory capacity in smartphones increased by 20.3%, from 80.7GB in 2019 to 97.11GB in 2020. However, iOS's increase in 2020 was 5.6%, far lower than the 20.5% increase in non-iOS devices. The difference in average capacity between iOS and non-iOS devices continues to narrow. The gap between the two groups was about 45.2GB in the fourth quarter of 2020, down from 56.8GB in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Although NAND prices continued to fall during 2019-2020, the sales share of high-capacity models (256GB and 512GB) of iOS did not grow during the same period. The high-capacity share was about 21.5% in the fourth quarter of 2020, even lower than 27.2% in the fourth quarter of 2019. The average capacity of iOS has reached nearly 130GB. 128-256GB is already high for ordinary consumers during the iPhone's usage cycle. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the demand for 512GB iPhones was about 3.7%.

We also observed similar configurations of mid- to high-capacity (256GB+512GB+1024GB) flash memory in non-iOS smartphones. The proportion of high-capacity flash memory in the fourth quarter of 2020 was approximately 7.5%, only slightly higher than 6.3% in the fourth quarter of 2019. However, the proportion of 128GB flash memory in non-iOS smartphones increased from 26.2% in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 39.0% in the fourth quarter of 2020, indicating that 128GB is the basic standard for mid- to high-end mobile phones.

From cnbeta