Tony -
Hey - you're showing your age or you have done some good homework. I will bet most people (well, many of them) have never heard of Mostek.
They were bought out by United Technologies in the late 70s or early 80s. Please let me know the actual date if you know it. United Tech fussed around with them for a while and I don't believe "they fit the corporate profile". United liked to make things that went UP - like jet engines and elevators (OTIS).
In the early or mid 80s, they sold the assets (a few fabs) to SGS-Thompson. Correct my memory if yours is better, please.
Why did MOSTEK tank? Three reasons, that I know of.They owned the 4K (yes that is K as in thousand!) and 16 K markets during the mid to late 70's. However, they never got their 64K into production in a reasonable time frame. Japan, Inc. ate their lunch at this level, starting about 1979 through 1985. The same happened to Intel, don't forget and they exited the memory business in 1986 officailly, but they were not much of aplayer for 3 or 4 years before that.
MOSTEK was essentially a pure DRAM company. They had some microcontroller that tried to compete with Intel but they never had the marketing muscle, or technology, to pull it off.
As the DRAM prices started falling in the early 80s, they had no good revenue stream, and went looking for the proverbial White Knight. Japan did their best to provide the knock-out punch to the US suppliers, and it worked really well.
Today, Micron is converting rapidly to 16Meg DRAMS. I believe the big Japanese manufcatureres are already at the 5 - 10 Million per month run rate. So is Samsung. DRAM prices aren't collapsing, they seem to be imploding. SO even at the 16M level, the margins are quite slim, if not negative. I have heard of unit pricing in the $10 to $12 dollar range for 16 Meg DRAMSs.
So, there are some pretty fair comparisons between Micron and Mostek.
But, Micron has their Micron Electroninc Computer Operation which seems to be doing OK - I don't know any details. They also make SRAM (not much profit there, however) and are getting into FLASH memory.
I would say the posssiblity of collapse is definitely there. If this DRAM squeeze is protracted - 6 to 12 months or more, they could be in serious jeopardy.
Micron does have J.R. Simplot on their board and he was the early financial/founde at Micron. Maybe he can help keep Micron afloat with his finances and connections. Come to think of it, the way Micron sues the Japanese and Koreans everytime they run into trouble, I wouldn't put it past them to hire Lee Iaccocca who knows how to get the US government (i.e., you and me as taxpayers) to bail them out!
Paul
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