by Anton Shilov
09/27/2002 | 04:18 PM
Micron Technologies, who announced their financial results for its fiscal year ended on August 29 (see this news-story) a couple of day ago, shared its plans on the DRAM arena, as well as presented certain interesting facts about the current state of memory market.
Presently DDR SDRAM chips occupy about 40% of all Micron’s DRAM production, however, it does not seem to be enough. The demand on such memory is very high nowadays since most of modern core-logic devices support only DDR SDRAM memory and the seasonal rise in demand on personal computers stipulated for shortage of DDR SDRAM chips. In fact, after Intel announces its PC2700 supporting chipsets in October, the deficit of such memory may strengthen. At least, memory makers hope it will happen: they badly need to increase their revenue and profit margin.<%BANNER[article]%>
According to Micron, average selling price of DRAM memory chips decreased about 30% for the quarter passed by. Although memory makers started to use new technologies and manufacturing processes to make their memory, they only managed to lower the costs of manufacturing on 10%.
At the moment 25% of all semiconductor manufacturing facilities that are owned by Micron make DRAM chips using 0.13 micron technology. The company expects this figure to rise another 25% by the end of this year and already in the first quarter 2003 70% to 75% of their memory will be produced using advanced 0.13 micron technology.
The company fully recognises the importance of using and implementing advanced technologies; as was stated by Steve Appleton, the company’s CEO, Micron planned to improve its current business model, rather than to buy other DRAM makers. Although Micron’s head said that the company considered all the offerings that were made to them, it is pretty unlikely that the US based memory maker will really buy Hynix even despite of the fact that the merger was going to become true earlier this year.