August this year appeared to be pretty weak in terms of computer sales. Our contacts among mainboards and graphics cards manufacturers told us that demand on their production was sometimes even weaker than in July, though, decline was not too serious. Most of computer-components suppliers are optimistic about September, October and November. Since not a lot of mainboards were bought, it is quite natural that memory demand was not high as well.

Recently Nikkei Market Access published the results of ICIS-LOR’s survey, describing the state of DRAM market between July 11 and August 9, 2002. The results are not favourable for memory-makers at all. The 30-day rolling average prices of 128Mb PC133 SDR SDRAMs for large-volume users between July 11th and August 9th, registered $2.90 in North America, $2.94 in Europe, and $2.71 in Asia. Compared with the previous 30-day rolling average up to August the 2nd, the prices were unchanged in North America, but fell 1.52 percent in Europe and declined 2.45 percent in Asia. According to DRAMeXchange, 128Mbit chips’ contract price fell down to $2.50 and even $2.15 in Asia in the second half of August. Spot-prices on 128Mb devices collapsed to $1.63 today. On the other hand, DDR266 SDRAM contract prices in the second half of August rose up to $6.75 for a 256Mb chip and $3.40 for 128Mb chip. The spot-prices are practically the same as contract, reaching $6.60 and $3.45 accordingly for 256 and 128Mb devices, remaining on the level of the first half of July.

In the nearest future SDR SDRAM price seems to continue dropping and DDR SDRAM costs are likely to be flat. As demand rises in September, prices may increase a bit. Keeping in mind large amounts of inventory in stocks, we do not expect the prices to rise considerably at least until the second half of September. It is very hard to predict the situation on this unstable market for more than two weeks, but it is not likely that the prices on DRAM will skyrocket. However, since Intel launches a number of new chipsets, memory pricing has all the chances to rise.