The cost of flash memory has fallen dramatically over the past three years. That's definitely a plus to consumers, but is hard on the manufacturers. Lower costs mean lower profits. To compensate for that, Toshiba has plans to more than double the amount of flash memory they manufacture, from 100,000 300mm wafers per month to 210,000 per month. Due to strong demand, increased output will help them a lot. According to the article, they are not even able to meet their current demand:
The company has been cutting costs and making more advanced, higher density products to protect its margins. Toshiba can also increase its income by producing more chips, because demand is strong, the company said. The company can only supply about 60 percent to 70 percent of its orders currently, a company spokesman said.
Doubling their output will have a significant impact worldwide, as they make up a good portion of the NAND market on their own, second only to Samsung. Flash memory is also more in demand than it ever has been, and demand will likely continue to rise for some time.
Toshiba, along with many other manufacturers, are busy with solid state disks as well, in which flash memory plays a huge part. Last week they announced that some of their new business model notebooks will come stock with 64GB SSDs, such as their Portege R500.