EL SEGUNDO – As a result of huge sales and high memory usage, Apple’s iPhone is expected to generate insatiable demand for NAND-type flash in 2010, straining supplies for the year, says iSuppli.

The iPhone is a NAND hog, consuming an average of 35.2 Gb of NAND, iSuppli estimates.

The volume is exacerbated by demand forecasts: iPhone shipments are set to rise to 33 million in 2010, up 31.5% compared to 2009. This growth is likely to lead to periods of undersupply for the year, the firm says.

iSuppli forecasts that mobile handsets with embedded flash units will grow to 732 million units in 2010, up 13.8% year-over-year.

Competitive mobile phones, including Motorola Droid, HTC Android Iris, Palm Pre Plus and Pixie Plus, and Google Nexus One, will aim to match the iPhone spec for spec in terms of memory capacity, boding well for NAND flash vendors.

Other products pushing NAND consumption include eBooks, smartphones and tablet PCs. eBooks contain 512 MB to 2 GB of embedded NAND included in each device. Tablet PCs use an anticipated storage density of 32 to 64 GB.