Market research firm TrendForce released NAND flash shipment figures for 3Q 2012. The global NAND flash market is valued at US $4.626 billion, a healthy 6.6% growth over the previous quarter. A TrendForce DRAMeXchange report provided a break-down of shipments of NAND flash by manufacturers. Leading the pack is Samsung, with 41.2% market-share, registering a 1.8% QoQ growth. Trailing behind is Toshiba, with 24.7% market share, and a significant 12.9% QoQ growth. In September, Toshiba cut prices and scaled up production, which may have contributed to the growth. Micron holds 14.4% of the market with 2.8% growth, SK Hynix 11.6% with 6.4% growth (the company began mass-production of SSD-grade NAND flash this quarter), and Intel with 7.6% of the market-share, growing at 19.7%. Bear in mind, these numbers represent NAND flash components used not only in SSDs, but also USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.