MacRumors.com

Apple announced today that it has reached long term supply agreements with a number of memory supply companies including Hynix, Intel, Micro, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba.

Apple will prepay up to $1.25 billion for flash memory over the next three months. The agreements secure a supply of NAND flash memory through 2010.

"We want to be able to produce as many of our wildly popular iPods as the market demands," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

Apple now uses Flash memory in two of the iPod models: the iPod shuffle and the iPod nano. Recent reports have hinted that Apple was seeking out more suppliers for the needed Flash memory components for their shuffle/nano iPod products. The traditional 5th Generation Video-capable iPod still uses a hard drive for storage.