Samsung Electronics plans to start producing a new generation of 3-D NAND flash memory for smartphones before the end of 2016. The South Korean electronics giant plans to manufacture 3-D NAND with 64 layers of data-storing memory cells in the company's plants in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, and in Xian, China.

Samsung holds the greatest market share for both NAND flash memory and DRAM memory for smartphones. The NAND flash memory market was in a slump in 2015 and initially looked like it would continue to stagnate through 2016.

But the market has begun to recover and Samsung wants to move on quickly from 48-layer NAND to 64-layer NAND to keep a step ahead of rival Toshiba, which plans to begin mass production of the chips in the first half of 2017.