Comments on todays activity??
Could this be why?
****Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Texas Instruments Halt 1Gb DRAM Project
Newsbytes - February 05, 1998 11:02
TOKYO, JAPAN, 1998 FEB 5 (NB) -- By Martyn Williams, Newsbytes. The plans of Hitachi, Ltd. [TOKYO:6501], Mitsubishi Electric Corp. [TOKYO:6503] and Texas Instruments [NYSE:TXN] to jointly develop a one gigabit DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chip are on hold. A spokesman for Hitachi told Newsbytes the project has been delayed for about a year, because of the poor conditions in the semiconductor market.
"One gigabit DRAMs are next, next-generation products. At present, each company would like to concentrate more on products that will be marketed sooner," he explained. "We are still jointly working together, it's just a little delay"
The joint development agreement was announced by the three companies in February 1997 and was signed to help reduce to large investments required and complex research and development work that has to be done before such large capacity memory chips can be realized.
The three partners had originally scheduled the start of the next stage in the project for this spring, although this will now be started in spring 1999, the official said.
The project is the latest casualty of a collapse in the DRAM chip market, which has seen prices fall rapidly over the last few months. Hitachi announced recently that it is halting semiconductor production at its eight Japanese factories for between four and seven days in both February and March.
By lowering production in the two months, the company is hoping to reduce inventories of DRAM, synchronous random access memory (SRAM) chips and mask read only memory (ROM) chips, building up because of the collapse in the market.
Mitsubishi Electric announced in mid-January that its net-loss for the current fiscal year, to the end of March 1998, is likely to be worse than previously forecast.
The company revised its net-loss forecast to 40 billion yen ($323.1 million) and announced a further cut in semiconductor spending, from 105.0 billion yen ($848.1 million) to $90 billion yen ($727.0 million), because of the weak chip market. In November 1997, the company had cut spending by 10 billion yen ($80.8 million), from 115.0 billion yen ($928.9 million), for the same reason.
In January, it also announced the closure of its semiconductor wafer fabrication operations in the United States, effective March 16, 1998. The plants were proving unprofitable, said the company.
Exchange rate: $1 = 123.80 yen
Reported By Newsbytes News Network: newsbytes.com |
