Japan NOR Flash Market

Japan NOR Flash Market Analysis

The Japan NOR Flash Market size is estimated at USD 3.16 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach USD 3.67 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 3% during the forecast period (2025-2030).

The market growth is driven by the rising demand for consumer electronics and automobiles manufacturing in the country. In addition, the developments of fabs and government incentives drive the market toward a growth trajectory.

• The demand for flash gained traction owing to increased penetration of the 5G network and demand for smartphones with advanced features and network capabilities such as 5G. High-performance smartphones consume high energy; thus, smartphone manufacturers are focusing on adopting flash in the next-generation smartphones to reduce power consumption and deliver high performance to consumers. For instance, in December 2022, As per the Japan Electronics and information technology Industries Association, the monthly domestic smartphone shipment volume reached 930,000 units in December 2022 compared to 590,000 in November 2022.
• Memory products to gain demand in coming years as the volume of data produced every second continues to rise. Thus, key vendors focus on spending billions of dollars to develop fabs and increase production capacity. For instance, in October 2022, Japan's Kioxia launched a new fab (Fab7) at Yokkaichi amid the market downturn. Fab7 is expected to increase the total production capacity of the Yokkaichi plant by 30%
• Government support to increase the production of NAND flash and fabs in the country fuel the market growth. For instance, in July 2022, the Japanese Government announced a subsidy of USD 680 million to Kioxia Holdings and Western Digital Corp to boost the production of NAND flash . The government aims to stabilize the chip production in the country.
• With the improvements in cell structure and the resulting increase in storage density, NAND flash technology is gaining popularity across market segments. This enables this non-volatile chip to considerably reduce the die size while providing faster throughput and better bandwidth at the system level. Innovations in the NAND flash and NOR flash are keeping pace with the accelerating demands in a data-centric world. The rise in demand for high-capacity storage to store, process, and manage vast amounts of data at higher speed and lower power consumption accelerates market growth.

Japan NOR Flash Market Trends and Insights

Automotive to Hold Significant Market Share

• Automotive industry to capture a significant share of Japan's Flash market during the forecast period owing to a rise in sales of EVs and rapid adoption of cutting-edge technologies in automotive. The next-generation self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles utilize various sensors and sensing cameras, which generate a huge amount of data every second and demand high-performance storage such as flash is expected to push the market towards a growth trajectory. In line with recent trends, many players are expanding their product portfolio for automotive applications.
• Japan is one of the largest producers of automobiles in the world. It is the major contributor to the country's GDP. Japan-based automotive key manufacturers such as Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Toyota dominate the automotive market worldwide. These automakers continuously focus on research and development and invest in electric vehicle production. For instance, in August 2022, Toyota Motor Corp. announced an investment of USD 5.6 billion toward the supply of battery electric vehicles in Japan and the United States. The investment is driven by the growing demand for EVs worldwide.
• With the advancements in automotive computerization continuing to progress, flash memory is seeing use in a broader range of various automotive applications. The new high-performance automotive applications such as infotainment systems, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), instrument clusters, and drive video/data recorders boost the demand for compute scalability resulting in increasing demand for low latency and high storage bandwidth.
• The Japanese government's ongoing efforts to shift to environment-friendly vehicles will accelerate the sales of electric vehicles. Japan's government has set a target to transition all new cars sold will be eco-friendly by 2035. The government is also supporting the initiative by offering subsidies for part of the cost of purchasing electric vehicles, such as Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs). According to Japan Automobile Dealers Association (JADA), the sales of new vehicles in April 2023 increased by over 16% compared to April 2022. These factors are expected to boost the segment growth.

NOR Flash to Grow with Significant Growth Rate

• NOR Flash is projected to grow at a significant growth rate during the forecast period. NOR flash memories provide high reliability with low initial response and boot latency. In addition, NOR Flash process technology advances, such as MirrorBit technology, which stores two bits per memory cell, support greater density scaling than floating-gate technology. The increased density enables monolithic 1-GB and higher density NOR flash products required for 5G wireless infrastructure. Due to such characteristics, NOR flash memories are widely used in wireless-infrastructure applications.
• In April 2022, the Japanese Government announced a plan: by the end of the fiscal year 2030, 99% of the population is predicted to be served by 5G networks. The penetration of 5G connections in Japan is projected to rise from 153% in 2021 to 154% in 2025, according to the GSMA Association. Further, the adoption rate of 5G smartphones is projected to increase to 81% in 2025 from 71% in 2021, while the penetration rate of 5G subscribers is projected to grow from 87% in 2021 to 88% in 2025. Also, Japan's 5G technology mix share is expected to rise to 68% by 2024.
• It is also expected that industrial robots, which are one of the most common use cases of NOR flash , and Japan is already one of the largest markets for industrial robots, are projected to create new market opportunities for market players. According to a recent report from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), Japanese manufacturers account for 45% of the global supply of industrial robots, making them the world's top manufacturer of industrial robots.
• Further, the demand for NOR Flash is expected to grow with the growing adoption of IoT devices. Due to the increasing availability of high-speed connectivity, rising cloud adoption, and increasing use of data processing and analytics, the adoption of IoT is growing steadily, which is expected to encourage segment growth. Further, the growing demand for wearables, smart devices, and digital acceleration across industries fuel the demand for high storage and small NOR flash chip.

Competitive Landscape

The Japanese flash market is moderately consolidated. Major vendors such as Micron Japan Inc., KIOXIA Corporation, Western Digital Corp., Renesas Electronics Corporation, and GigadeviceSemiconductor Inc dominate the Japan Flash market. As the entry barriers in the market are high, the entry of new players is difficult. The existing vendors are investing heavily in the R&D of new and innovative products and expanding manufacturing facilities to increase production capacity.

In February 2023, Kioxia Corporation participated in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Spaceborne Computer-2 program. Through this partnership, KIOXIA will provide SSDs for robust flash storage in a test environment in HPE ProLiant and HPE Edgeline servers.

In July 2022, Micron Technology, Inc. announced that it had started mass production of the 232-layer NAND to increase the performance of storage solutions. In comparison to earlier generations of Micron NAND, the new NAND offers industry-leading areal density, more capacity, and enhanced energy efficiency, enabling best-in-class support for the most data-intensive use cases.

Japan NOR Flash Industry Leaders

Recent Industry Developments

• February 2023: Infineon Technologies AG launched the SEMPER Nano NOR Flash for small-form-factor, battery-powered electronic devices. With the increasing demand for more , the company introduced new flash to deliver a solution comprising both high density and low power, design support, and robust engineering.
• September 2022: Japan government announced a subsidy of USD 320 million to Micorn Technology Inc. to develop advanced chips at their manufacturing plant based in Hiroshima, Japan. The subsidy aims to increase cooperation between the United States and Japan amid geopolitical tensions and technology conflict with China.