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DRAM Memory Trends: Upwards!

by Anton Shilov
09/16/2002 | 06:05 AM

The seasonal rise in demand continues and the memory prices keep on moving upwards. Some sources indicated that DDR SDRAM costs may heighten further since basically there are no chipsets for mainboards that support SDR SDRAM on the market. All core-logic devices offered by Intel support either DDR SDRAM or RDRAM. Hence, the demand on SDR memory will slide down. Provided that PC shipments will continue to grow this month, the prices on DDR SDRAM may also go up. Nevertheless, analyst are still not sure if DRAM industry will uptick strongly this year, since major industry players like Intel and HPQ do not anticipate serious uptrend in their sales.

DDR DRAM Spot Prices at DRAMeXchange / 37th Week
Item	Spot Price Average	Daily Change	Weekly Average	Weekly Trend	Monthly Average	Monthly Trend
DDR333; 256Mb (32Mx8)	$7.33	Down 0.41%	$7.32	Up 1.52%	$7.17	Up 2.09%
DDR266; 256Mb (32Mx8)	$6.60	Down 0.3%	$6.69	Up 1.05%	$6.61	Up 1.21%
DDR266; 256Mb (16Mx16)	$7.16	Stable	$7.16	Stable	$7.01	Up 2.14%
DDR266; 128Mb (16Mx8)	$3.33	Down 0.30%	$3.35	Down 2.05%	$3.37	Up 0.59%
SDR DRAM Spot Prices at DRAMeXchange / 37th Week
Item	Spot Price Average	Daily Change	Weekly Average	Weekly Trend	Monthly Average	Monthly Trend
SDR133; 256Mb (16Mx16)	$3.50	Stable	$3.51	Down 0.85%	$3.57	Down 1.68%
SDR133; 256Mb (32Mx8)	$2.58	Down 3.44%	$2.76	Down 3.94%	$3.02	Down 8.61%
SDR133; 128Mb (16Mx8)	$1.72	Stable	$1.78	Up 8.43%	$1.73	Up 2.89%
SDR133; 128Mb (8Mx16)	$2.03	Stable	$2.05	Up 2.5%	$2.06	Down 0.49%

It is quite interesting, but 128Mb SDR SDRAM spot-prices went up on the 37th week! In fact, some sources revealed that numerous memory makers, Hynix, for instance, now tighten shipments to the spot market. The latter fact is quite understandable since SDR SDRAM is not longer used in PCs that are available on the market, hence, the chips and modules are sold on the upgrade market and different niche markets. As a result, the SDR SDRAM prices may stabilise at a fixed level and stay there for a lot of time.

DRAM Contract Prices at DRAMeXchange / September First Half
Item	Highest Price	Trend	Lowest Price	Trend
DDR266; 256Mb	$6.90	Up 2.22%	$6.35	Up 1.6%
DDR266; 128Mb	$3.50	Up 2.94%	$3.20	Up 1.58%
SDR133; 256Mb	$4.60	Down 8.0%	$4.00	Down 5.88%
SDR133; 128Mb	$2.30	Down 8.0%	$2.0	Down 6.97%

Contract prices were also been set last week, now they are even a bit higher than the spot prices. For the mentioned period DDR prices grew from 1.58% to 2.94%, what is pretty normal for the current situation on this market, to tell you the truth. Furthermore, given that the spot prices are likely to grow, the contract customers will favour from offered costs in a week. By the way, take a look at contract costs for SDR memory: they are $0.60 to $1.50 higher than spot prices! I assume, not a lot of buyers get this type of DRAM for using in personal computers, at least, there is not a lot of sense to buy it on contract basis at the moment.

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