Rumour Apple on NAND buying spree underpins expectation for new devices this summer.

"Oh Apple, what are you up to? Just like we saw right around this time last year in preparation for Apple's new iPhone 3G and updated iPod touch, Apple is placing huge orders of NAND chips thereby threatening the supply in demand by other tier-one vendors. This time we've got DigiTimes confirming earlier reports that Apple is cornering the market on flash memory -- specifically, the Taiwanese rumor rag is reporting orders of "100 million 8Gb (8 gigabit, not gigabyte) NAND flash chips mostly with Samsung Electronics." That's twice the size of the order reported last year. The tiny memory chips are then recombined during manufacturing into the larger 16GB, 32GB, and so on capacities we expect to find in our handheld consumer electronics. Anyone still doubting new Apple handhelds in June?"