A large quantity of “fake” NAND flash is showing up in the China market. The counterfeit products are packaged as finished products, such as memory cards or USB flash drives, from brand-named suppliers, but the fake chips themselves appear to have Samsung Electronics markings on them. It is unclear who and when noticed the counterfeit products, which are usually re-labeled flash cards or drives that are also completely unreliable.
This is hardly the first time when counterfeit products emerge on the emerging markets, however, given that flash memory is now used widely across the world, it can be expected that fake flash products may also be found on well developed markets. For example, re-labeled USB flash drives were sold rather widely through eBay several years ago.
Not only are these a threat to users but they are also pose a grave danger to the manufacturers. These fakes are very cheap and they compete against the normal devices on the market. Since flash-based products usually come in sealed packaging, distributors and computer stores cannot test them all of them, hence, users may easily get faulty devices.
Neither Samsung Electronics nor any suppliers of branded memory cards or USB flash drives issued official statements on the matter.
Source: X-bit Labs, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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