Samsung said Thursday that it's been selling 20nm mobile memory chips to Apple, responding to market concerns that the impact of an Apple-Elpida partnership could hurt the company. Samsung said it had begun producing the industry's first four gigabit (Gb), low power double-data-rate 2 (LPDDR2) memory using 20 nanometer (nm) class technology. The mobile DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chip, which went into mass production last month, will help the market to deliver advanced devices that are faster, lighter and provide longer battery life than today's mobile devices. Samsung says it had began supplying the new mobile DRAMs to its customers, including Apple.

Apple is the Samsung's biggest client in parts, and is expected to buy $11 billion worth of chips and flat-screens this year.

On Wednesday, Samsung lost 6 percent of its market value after a report from Taiwan said Apple would reduce the use of its chips since Japan's Elpida signed a contract to supply Apple with mobile DRAM chips.

Actually, Elpida has already been supplying high-end chips to Apple. However, this time struggling Elpida has accepted Apple's price-cut demands as part of an attempt to raise cash.

Samsung's executives downplayed the importance of an Apple-Elpida contract, saying that Apple has been always looking to diversify its component source channels.

based on the 4Gb components, Samsung can deliver 2-Gigabyte (GB) solutions that boast razor-thin thickness of 0.8 millimeters (mm) , which stack four 4Gb LPDDR2 chips in a single LPDDR2 package. This new package is approximately 20 percent thinner than 2GB packages that stack four 30nm-class 4Gb LPDDR2 chips. Also, the new 2GB package can process data at up to 1,066 megabits per second (Mbps), while spending the same amount of power as that of a previous 30nm-class 2GB package.

Samsung expects the newly introduced 20nm-class 4Gb LPDDR2 will rapidly replace 30nm-class 2Gb-based 1GB LPDDR2 that was in limited supply at the 0.8 mm thickness.