Demand for DRAM stronger than expected in PCs
By Robert Ristelhueber
EBN
(02/26/02 17:18 p.m. EST)
siliconstrategies.com
Demand for DRAM from PC makers is exceeding expectations for this quarter, and some of that is being driven by renewed growth in the lagging corporate environment, according to an executive of Micron Technology Inc.
“Going into last December, our customers were setting us up to think about a 10% down first quarter compared to the fourth quarter,” said Kipp Bedard, vice president of corporate affairs. “They have revised that to think more in the down 5% to flattish” range, he said at the Robertson Stephens Technology Conference in San Francisco.
Although most of that new strength continues to come from the consumer PC and the notebook computer segments, “recently a couple of customers have mentioned a little bit of renewed corporate spending, a little bit of IT spending,” Bedard added.
Megabytes-per-system is surging, according to Dave Parker, manager of investor relations. Whereas average DRAM per box was 170 Mbytes at the end of 2001, “based on what our customers tell us...we're looking at a pretty clear path to 256 megabytes per box and possibly higher” by the end of this year. Graphics memory is also surging due to the popularity of multimedia on consumer PCs, he added.
The introduction of Windows XP is a primary driver of that trend, he said. “Most of our OEMs are telling us they're not really shipping any XP-configured boxes with anything less than 256 megabytes of memory.” |
