Flash may be making huge leaps and bounds in terms of technological progress, but the prices for it are going up according to Samsung. That bad news comes with a bit of good, however, as they also see the cost of DRAM falling. Due to oversupply, DRAM pricing is dropping and may directly affect the cost of RAM you buy for computers. With the release of Vista, an increase in demand for RAM caused prices to rise quite high, and are now at half of that they were just a few months ago. Samsung expects this to last for a while yet:
The DRAM market is in oversupply right now and it might not recover until the second half of this year, said Chang-Gyu Hwang, president of Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business. Samsung is the world's largest producer of DRAM and NAND flash, and many industry watchers pay close attention to its market forecasts.
Demand for NAND flash, however, is increasing. As prices for it increase, that'll wane - hopefully sooner rather than later, as many companies are expected to release quite a few solid state hard drives this year, and cited prices were already pretty steep without a price hike.