Three days ago, Intel and Micron established a joint-venture company named IM Flash.

Intel bought from Micron memory designs and certain related technologies, as well as a perpetual license to use and modify the designs. All this for $230 million. This is nothing for a $13 billion NAND flash memory market.

The NAND market is currently dominated by two firms: Samsung Electronics and Toshiba Corp.

NAND begin to be popular for their advantage to retain data even after power has been shut off, making them ideal for storage cards used in digital cameras and mobile phones, as well as digital music players.

The facility opened in January, but for this Intel leased half of Micron’s chip factory in Manassas, Virginia. It will buy and install its own production equipment, but the machinery will be operated and maintained by Micron. Micron is taking a fee for operating and maintaining the equipment, and will also sell chips to IM Flash at a price equal to the manufacture one.

Soon after the deal has been signed they got the first customer. And not anyone, but Apple. Apple signed an agreement with IM Flash for supplying NAND memory until December 31, 2010. And for this they made a prepayment of $250 million.

So, now that Intel entered the NAND market, things will begin to change. For better or for worse, who can say?