iSuppli is reporting that Apple has slashed its 2008 NAND memory order forecast significantly and informed suppliers that its demand growth will be slow. According to iSuppli, this will result in huge ramifications as Apple uses 13.1 percent of global NAND supply. Every year since the flash based iPod Nano was introduced, Few market research firms said in 2006 that Apple will decrease its Flash order as the iPod sales are going down but every quarter iPod sales have grown compared to the same quarter a year before. This kind of analysis is based on assumption rather than fact because neither Apple is telling market research firms that it has decreased its flash memory orders nor the companies supplying flash memory to Apple have released such a statement. If a company says that it will supply less flash memory this year to Apple, their stocks will dive downward. On an average, the total number of iPod’s sold have increased by 20% to 30% in 2007. This means that Apple’s need for NAND also increased by at least 20% even without adding iPhone, which also uses NAND. So where was the decrease last year? I think every market research firm should analyze their previous years predictions to see where they have been off the mark and this might also help them analyze the coming year better. I think iSuppli has released this report because their previous prediction of increase in NAND flash purchases by 32.2%, which would have resulted in favorable market for NAND suppliers, has been proved wrong. As NAND prices have been falling continuously, the availability of NAND has been good and will remain strong. In the first two months of this year, we have already heard the rumors that Apple has decreased Mac production and also that Apple has cut iPhone production, we will get a clear picture of what Apple has done when they release their quarterly sales report for first quarter of 2008 in April.