Apple suppliers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Foxconn Electronics have reportedly joined forces in a bid for Toshiba Memory's shares, according to a Chinese-language Liberty Times report.

With a successful bid, TSMC will be able to challenge Korea-based Samsung Electronics' leadership in the flash memory market, allowing the pure-play foundry house to achieve a new wave of growth.

As for Foxconn, company chairman Terry Guo has said that demand for storage will start rising as the 8K resolution era arrives and Foxconn also has such demand and likes to push further into the related industry.

Guo also stated that Foxconn is willing to assist Toshiba using the same business strategy it adopted for its partnership with Sharp and Toshiba should not have any concerns about competition partnering with Foxconn. Guo also promised to keep all key technologies in Japan.

Guo pointed out that Foxconn is currently the largest storage equipment maker worldwide and seeing the IT market has started increasing their adoption of solid state drives (SSDs), he believes demand will rise in the upcoming years.

The two companies' bidding team is currently in Japan aggressively preparing for document submission prior to the March 29 first-round bidding.

Apple currently uses Samsung flash memory. With Samsung once again trying to work around the patent infringement lawsuit with Apple, perhaps now Apple is finally looking to their other suppliers to jump into the memory business. With TSMC in the race to challenge Samsung, it would appear that they would be the hungriest to win Apple's memory business to hurt their challenger Samsung.

If the TSMC-Foxconn bid succeeds, it'll be nothing but bad news for Samsung who would most definitely lose most or all of Apple's memory business over time.

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