Samsung's reported interest in memory company SanDisk sent the US firm's share price climbing yesterday.

SanDisk said in a statement today that it "periodically has conversations with multiple parties, including Samsung, regarding a variety of potential business opportunities. We evaluate all of these opportunities.”

Samsung Electronics said in a statement that although "it is considering various opportunities, nothing has been decided yet".

No certainty that Samsung will line up a bid for SanDisk, but even the prospect of an acquisition is enough to grab the portable storage industry's attention.   

This is no surprise given that Samsung is the world's largest supplier of NAND flash storage chips and SanDisk is a major supplier of flash-based data storage cards and modules which are used in mobiles, cameras and PCs. SanDisk also has a flash chip manufacturing partnership with Toshiba.

Background to this are falling prices in the NAND flash market with share prices of all the main suppliers coming under pressure this year. There has also been talk of the need for consolidation in the market and a tie-up between Samsung and SanDisk would create a powerful force in the NAND market which is so price-dependent.    

In the immediate future, the expectation for the NAND market is that prices will continue to fall.

According to iSuppli, global NAND flash memory revenue declined to $3.36bn in Q2, down 2.5% from $3.45bn in Q1. iSuppli further reported that in the June quarter five of the top seven NAND suppliers posted either declines or zero growth in revenue compared to the March quarter.

"Flash inventories remain excessive and pricing and margins will therefore remain under pressure until supply and demand come into balance," commented Eli Harari, SanDisk's chairman and CEO earlier in the summer.

Samsung is also reported to have agreed the sale of its share of Symbian to Nokia. Mobile operating system devleoper Symbian is being reshaped by Nokia as part of its new open source software strategy.