Wallace Kou, president and CEO of Taiwan-based Silicon Motion Technology, said demand for NAND flash solutions will be much stronger than in 2019 due to the commercialization of 5G networks and devices.

He said that his company expects NAND flash memory chips to maintain stable shipments in the fourth quarter of 2019 as demand grows, and is optimistic about the business outlook for 2020, as demand for smartphones and the Internet of Things Both will be greatly stimulated by the commercialization of 5G.

Kou stressed that with the high-speed data transmission of 5G networks, the storage capacity of 5G smartphones will definitely increase greatly. Compared with the conventional 128GB of existing smartphones, this capacity may reach a high level of 1TB in the near future.

He also pointed out that in the year of 2021-2022, with the advent of 5G base stations with more specifications, it is expected that the penetration rate of 5G consumer devices in the Chinese market will not rise. At present, China's three major telecom operators have established a total of 130,000 radio stations, mainly using the spectrum below 6 GHz.

According to industry sources, the amount of data generated by various terminal devices using 5G networks has grown exponentially, which will greatly boost the growth of the enterprise and data center storage markets.

ChinaFlashMarket (CFM) statistics show that by 2019, the company's SSD shipments to China are estimated to reach 31.1 million, accounting for 25% of the global production of NAND flash chips, and the average unit storage capacity is 2.3TB. Overall, China's demand for NAND flash memory chips is expected to show strong growth in 2020.