SanDisk is considering a production halt over the holidays at its manufacturing facilities in Japan amid a general slowdown in the flash memory chip industry, the storage method commonly used in mobile phones (either as internal memory or on microSD cards), CNET News reports.

"The joint venture is evaluating plans for operations over the holiday season, including a possible stoppage of some production lines," a SanDisk spokesman said Friday in the report. "We constantly consider manufacturing schedules in light of market requirements and this is particularly true during the holiday season."

SanDisk shares production lines with Toshiba; together the two companies represent about 36 percent of the market. Samsung is the current leader with 43 percent of the market, according to the report.