After all that had happened to and between Mosel Vitelic, ProMOS and Infineon AG for the last year or a bit less, the former has reportedly decided to withdraw itself from DRAM business. The company will now concentrate on trendy flash memory for fashionable and stylish MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile phones.

Basically speaking, Mosel’s attitude towards DRAM business could be guessed back in Fall 2002 when it used ProMOS’ shares as collateral for bonds it receives this year, however, at that time it was unclear whether the company put up the shares of its joint venture with Infineon as collateral in order to develop its DRAM business or simply in an attempt to survive. Given that now Mosel Vitelic has no manufacturing technology partners and probably no money to design fabrication processes itself, I believe it is an obvious decision for the company to drop DRAM business.

The Inquirer and Economic News reported that Mosel Vitelic has suspended its shares on the local stock market. I believe in this case it will hardly keep the remaining shares on ProMOS as well, hence, expect the Taiwanese DRAM vendor to sell them eventually. Keep in mind that ProMOS basically lives its own live now and already plans to establish a joint venture with Japanese Elpida. On the other side of the world there is Infineon, who has deals with Nanya and also 21% of ProMOS shares.

Mosel Vitelic supplied nearly 2% of the world’s DRAM output in 2002 and was ranked as number nine memory maker last year (see this news-story). With Mosel Vitelic, Hynix and some other minor DRAM makers quitting the business, the overall situation on that market may improve.