A Flash Based 4GB iPod mini?

eeTimes reports that Apple Computer plans to buy as much as 40% of the NAND Flash Memory supply from Samsung Electronics in the second half of this year.

According to one analyst's sources:

Samsung has offered Apple "extremely low prices on its [Flash] parts" in order to convince Apple to switch from HDD storage to [Flash] memory for the 4-GByte-density iPod.

The report said iSuppli believes that Samsung has offered to match prices from the HDD suppliers, even though current microdrive prices are about half the cost of the equivalent flash density.

The reason for the price cut would be to lock up Apple as a customer to supply Flash memory for a Flash-based iPod mini which currently falls at the 4GB price point. Tom's Hardware provides more thoughts from iSuppli's analyst.