By comparison, the traditional PC business does not put heavy emphasis on the creation of an ecosystem.

The iPad and Amazon's Kindle electronic reader are also expected to drive an 8% increase in the embedded NOR flash memory market. Because NOR allows random access to any memory location, it typically is used as read-only memory, as opposed to NAND flash, which is repeatedly erased and re-written to.

This year, shipments of NOR memory chips for embedded applications are , up from 3.64 billion units in 2010. NOR is expected to continue to grow 7% to 9% annually over the next four years, rising to 5.41 billion units shipping in 2015.

"The use of NOR flash memory in tablets and e-book readers now may represent a mere drop in the bucket compared to total embedded NOR demand," Ryan Chien, a researcher for memory and storage at iSuppli, said in a statement. "However, shipments for NOR for tablets and e-book readers are growing exponentially. In fact, the combined category for tablets and e-book readers will generate the highest sales growth for embedded NOR of any product in 2011 and the following years."