Hi Jdaasoc; A lot of what goes on in memory is a function of what advantages the various players have. Samsung has the advantage at making somewhat more expensive high end chips. So they put out as much RDRAM as they can.
Micron, on the other hand, has the advantage at pumping out lots of medium end chips at low cost. Yes, they are undoubtedly losing money, but try to see it from their perspective.
If they shut down a fab, it's going to cost them a lot of money, and it won't be easy to gain that market share back later. If, on the other hand, they run all their factories at full blast, they will put other memory makers out of business, and that means that they'll be able to have higher market share (and much higher profits) when the cycle turns up again.
So of course Micron is going to pump out as much chips as possible. Here's a prediction: Micron won't ever reduce production, no matter how much money they lose per chip.
Re: "I can see why RMBS decided to voluntarily limited SDRAM royalty payment recently." That's silly. There was nothing voluntary about it. You and I both know that Rambus' royalty agreements had an out for the memory makers in the event of a legal loss, and consequently Rambus had no choice but to accept the reduced royalties. If they hadn't of done that, they'd have had to let them quit paying completely.
The only thing I'd like to know is how low those royalties have gone. Since Rambus doesn't warn, I'm supposing we won't know until the next earnings release.
-- Carl |
