Analysis: A memorable day for Micron
By David Lammers
EE Times
April 22, 2002 (7:59 p.m. EST)
eet.com
AUSTIN, Texas — It's been awhile since North America sat atop the market-share heap in commodity memories.
Micron Technology, Inc. made it to that perch Monday with double-barreled announcements, agreeing to acquire the memory unit of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. for at least $3.4 billion in stock and finalizing a deal to acquire Toshiba Corp.'s commodity DRAM business.
The two deals will put an American semiconductor company in the No. 1 position in a revamped DRAM industry that many had expected to be taken over by Asian rivals.
Hynix — the former semiconductor operation of the huge Hyundai chaebols — emerged from its takeover of rival LG Semicon and the Asian financial crisis crippled with debt, while Japan-based companies were hobbled by a reluctance to invest in the brutally cyclical DRAM sector. Meanwhile, Micron's single-minded focus on memories flip-flopped any expectations that memory production would move to the Far East. Instead, power in the DRAM industry has shifted West, to a company founded on profits from the Idaho potato fields.
After the dust settles, Micron, Samsung Electronics, and Infineon Technologies become the Big Three in the memory business, with Japan's Elpida — the joint venture between NEC Corp. and Hitachi, Ltd. — as a distant fourth. |
