Gottfried, chip prices rise. Jeff
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THE KOREA HERALD: DRAM CHIPS PRICES STARTING TO CLIMB STEADILY
88% match; The Korea Herald ; 17-Apr-2000 12:00:00 am ; 207 words
Prices of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips are steadily increasing, industry watchers said yesterday.
Prices of 8M x 8 PC-100 synchronous DRAM chips, which account for the largest market share, rose 10 cents since the previous day to the $6.32 to $6.70 range yesterday.
Prices of 64M DRAM chips have also been increasing slightly from the $6 level seen so far this month.
"Should the trend continue, we expect prices to rise above $7 per unit," an industry watcher said. "Semiconductors are emerging from a low season in sales amid forecasts of a sharp rise in demand for Intel CPUs (central processing units)," he said, adding that DRAM prices will also continue rising for the time being.
Prices of 128M DRAM chips also increased to between $12.05 to $12.27 per unit.
Recently, Samsung and Hyundai electronics companies doubled their production volume of 64M DRAM chips to around 100 million units a month.
In January of last year, both companies produced around 50 million 64M DRAM chips a month, but increased output to around 70 million units by September through improved manufacturing technology. Also, Samsung Electronics finalized construction of additional assembly lines at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, the expanded output by both companies appears to have created some affect on lowering DRAM chip prices on the market. However, by lowering production costs per chip, the companies were able to maintain previous profit levels.
It costs domestic manufacturers approximately $4 to manufacture a single DRAM chip.
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