According to financial news site Calcalist, Apple has closed the deal to acquire Anobit, an Israeli based NAND flash memory firm, for upwards of $500 million dollars.

The acquisition is reportedly based on Anobit’s innovative, efficient storage solutions based on its proprietary MSP (Memory Signal Processing) technology. The technology should help Apple save bundles of money by lowering costs while at the same time significantly boosting performance and capacity in the memory chips they use throughout their device lineup — specifically iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and SSD dependent portables like the MacBook Air.

Apple has yet to comment on the rumor of the purchase.

Source: Calcalist via BGR

Anobit, a company that makes NAND flash memory — the kind used extensively in everything from iPhones to iPads to MacBook Airs — is apparently in Apple’s acquisition radar of Apple. According to TechCrunch, the price could even be in the $400 – 500 million range.

What makes Anobit stand out from the crowd is their highly innovative, efficient solution based on its proprietary MSP (Memory Signal Processing) technology and which aim sto improve the speed, endurance and performance of the drives. Purchases of non-software related companies are usually pretty rare, and only two have been documented by Apple, so we will wait to see if this all plays out.

Source: TechCrunch

DigiTimes (via Engadget) is reporting that Apple is once again draining the world dry of NAND Flash memory chips ahead of an anticipated summer iPhone hardware refresh.

The iPhone 3G has one NAND Flash memory slot, currently maxing out at the 16GB density. So, if Apple is planning to take it to 32GB, higher density chips will of course be required. Will supply and pricing allow that by the summer? If it does, it also means the dual-slotted iPod touch could hit a whopping 64GB by its next refresh cycle in the fall.

Anyone out there itching to load that much data on a multi-touch device?

Apple is perhaps the most gluttonous consumer of flash RAM chips on the planet, what with most iPod’s flash memory based and still selling in the multiple tens of millions and — oh yeah — the iPhone and iPod touch. 14 million iPhone 3Gs were sold last year alone and this year? According to Apple Insider, they’s waddled the chair up and parked it right at the buffet:

The iPhone maker has bought out Samsung’s entire available supply, putting the world’s largest producer of flash memory on allocation until April 2009, according to the report. Samsung makes just over 40% of the world’s NAND Flash RAM.

There was no indication, however, whether or not Apple has switched to the double-capacity chips they’ll need to take the iPhone to 32GB. Due to the communications radios, previous iPhones have only 1 RAM slot as opposed the 2 in the iPod touch.

But we kind of want 32GB in our iPhones, right?