Samsung Names Spansion Best Supplier 2006

Spansion Inc., the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, today announced that it has received the Best Supplier of the Year 2006 Award from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Spansion was the only NOR Flash memory supplier selected. Spansion also won the award in 2005 and in 2001 under AMD, and received the Most Valued Partner prize from the Mobile and Communication Division in 2004.

The award, Samsung's highest form of recognition for its suppliers, represents an important customer acknowledgement of Spansion's commitment to providing advanced Flash memory solutions and customer support to the Korean mobile handset industry.

"Winning the Supplier of the Year Award for the second consecutive year is the result of Spansion's strategic commitment to Korean customers," said Steve Kwon, vice president of Spansion Korea. "Spansion's cost-effective and flexible MirrorBit(R) technology enables Korean handset manufacturers to offer innovative mobile phones for a range of platforms. Spansion will continue to closely work with Korean customers to deliver value-added memory solutions with high performance and more advanced storage features and capacity."

Today's mobile users are increasingly demanding multi-media features in handsets, such as high-resolution digital camera capabilities, CD-quality audio, and DVD-quality video. This creates a growing challenge for handset designers to develop platforms that accommodate flexible amounts of both code and data storage. Using memory sub-systems based on Spansion's proprietary MirrorBit NOR and MirrorBit ORNAND(TM) architectures, customers can develop a single, scalable platform that enables a range of storage capabilities with reduced time-to-market and design complexity.

Nominations for Samsung's Best Supplier Award come from all five of the company's business divisions: Digital Appliance Business, Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business and Telecommunication Network Business. A corporate committee then selects the winners based the on criteria of technology leadership, quality, business volume and relationship - Spansion.