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To: Gottfried who wrote (8844)	2/28/2003 10:57:00 PM
From: Return to Sender	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95632

No end in sight for DDR price meltdown By Jack Robertson (02/28/03 06:26 p.m. EST) siliconstrategies.com Contract prices for mainstream DDR SDRAM have plunged 25% to 33% in a month amid a glutted global market. Although DDR prices have been declining steadily from a peak n November, the latest sharp drop was welcomed by OEM buyers caught in their own competitive product pricing squeeze. Contract prices for 256Mbit DDR chips last week ranged from a low of $3.65 to a high of $4.25, while 128Mbit DDR ranged from $1.75 to $2.25, according to online broker DRAMExchange.com. In both cases, that's about half what the chips were fetching three months earlier. The price collapse also for the first time drove DDR chips below the average selling price of single-data-rate SDRAM. Contract prices for 256Mbit SDR SDRAM swung between $4.20 and $5, with 128Mbit chips selling for $2.50 to $3--a 50% increase since November, according to DRAMExchange.com. The broker attributed the change to DRAM makers shifting production lines to DDR, which created spot shortages of the older memory. In the spot market, DDR chips have fallen in price by 32% in the past month. Spot prices for 256Mbit chips sunk to $2.89--well below the contract level--although 128Mbit DDR is hovering just outside the contract range at $1.67, DRAMExchange.com said. Many observers expect DDR prices to continue falling in the spot market as vendors try to unload excess inventory. "Lots of inventory is coming into the market, causing prices to drop very rapidly," said Ken Hurley, president of Nanya Technology Corp. USA, San Jose. "That will affect contract prices, which decline further as the spot market puts more pressure on negotiations." Analysts and chipmakers agreed that the latest OEM price bonanza is the result of a double-whammy for suppliers: the rapid production ramp of DDR and traditionally slow first-quarter demand. The state of oversupply was inevitable given that so many DRAM makers moved to DDR production at the same time, according to Mueez Deen, director of DRAM marketing at Samsung Semiconductor Inc., San Jose. "This came at the same time that customer demand fell off in the normally slow first quarter," he said. Joseph Osha, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Research, New York, agreed. "With PC demand seasonally slow, DRAM manufacturers are now clearly overproducing DDR parts," he said. "Not surprisingly, there is more DDR inventory in the channel than SDR SDRAM inventory, with overall industry inventory still in the four-week range." Even with the oversupply situation, DRAM suppliers aren't cutting back production, according to Paul Zecher, memory analyst at independent distributor Converge Inc., Peabody, Mass. "It doesn't look as if the manufacturers have any intention of reducing output," Zecher said, indicating that bargain-basement prices for DDR could continue for some time. The price swoon could ease, however, if PC manufacturers follow their usual pattern of adding cheap memory content to their boxes. Farhad Tabrizi, vice president of worldwide marketing at Hynix Semiconductor Inc., San Jose, said that previous cycles of DRAM oversupply ended when customers took advantage of low-cost memory to increase PC memory size. Nanya's Hurley said the price of DDR chips also might stabilize as production of higher-speed DDR400 chips begins to ramp up. "There could be some capacity shift to DDR400," he said. "It depends on how quickly manufacturers can ramp up DDR400 production. Everybody is sampling devices now, but some may be later than others moving into volume production." Gottfried 2020 Insight gives surprisingly good coverage of a boatload of industries. Excellent site. RtS

To: Gottfried who wrote (8844)	2/28/2003 11:13:53 PM
From: Return to Sender	Respond to of 95632

The TOP DRAM Manufacturers in this post DRAM Bulletin: Samsung, Nanya, Infineon were 2002 winners By Nam Hyung Kim Semiconductor Business News (02/28/03 08:53 a.m. EST) siliconstrategies.com The following column was provided by Nam Hyung Kim, a senior analyst with iSuppli Corp., an El Segundo, Calif.-based market research firm. Surging prices and sales of Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM in 2002 helped Samsung Electronics to retain its number-one position in the DRAM market allowed up-and-coming supplier Nanya Technology Corp. to break into the ranks of the top five for the first time, according to iSuppli Corp.'s preliminary DRAM market share research. Increased price premiums for DDR in the second half of 2002 helped boost Samsung's share of the DRAM market to 32.5 percent for the year, up from 28.2 percent in 2001, iSuppli estimates. Samsung was the leading DDR producer in 2002. Taiwan-based Nanya in 2002 increased its share of the DRAM market to 5.5 percent, up from 2.9 percent in 2001. Nanya differentiated itself by concentrating on DDR production, with the high-end memory accounting for 90 percent of its DRAM output by late 2002 tch, Oct. 28, 2002). On the strength of this strategy, Nanya rose to the number five rank, up from seventh place in 2001. The companies' strong positions in DDR allowed them to achieve both growth and profitability in 2002. Samsung's DRAM revenues rose 55 percent in 2002, while Nanya's surged by a remarkable 153 percent. This compares to 33 percent growth for the overall DRAM market in 2002. The top five DRAM suppliers in 2002 were Samsung, Micron, Infineon, Hynix and Nanya, as presented in Table 1. The top five suppliers accounted for 82 percent of total worldwide DRAM revenue in 2002. Besides Samsung and Nanya, other big winners in the DRAM market in 2002 included Infineon Technologies AG, whose sales surged 67 percent for the year. Infineon's sales were boosted by higher ASPs and by increased licensing fees. This propelled Infineon to the third rank in the DRAM market, up from the fourth position in 2002, marking the first time that the German supplier has achieved top-three status in this area. Infineon just barely edged out struggling Hynix Semiconductor Inc. for the third position. During much of 2002, Hynix was the subject of intense speculation regarding its ownership, financial viability and continued survival. The South Korean semiconductor maker eked out only a modest 11 percent increase in DRAM revenue for the year. Micron Technology Inc. held on to its second-place ranking. Just as individual company rankings shifted in 2002, last year brought changes to the regional mix of sales, with Taiwan gaining prominence. Taiwan suppliers controlled 13 percent of the worldwide DRAM market in 2002, compared to 8 percent in 2001. Worldwide DRAM market share ranking ($ millions) 2002 rank 2001 rank Company 2002 rev. 2001 rev. % change 2002 market share 1 1 Samsung 4985 3205 55% 32.5% 2 2 Micron 2794 2324 20% 18.2% 3 4 Infineon 1965 1175 67% 12.8% 4 3 Hynix 1962 1768 11% 12.8% 5 7 Nanya 844 333 153% 5.5% 6 5 Elpida 615 874 -30% 4.0% 7 11 Winbond 478 130 268% 3.1% 8 8 Mitsubishi 362 261 39% 2.4% 9 10 Mosel Vit. 302 205 47% 2.0% 10 6 Toshiba 287 459 -37% 1.9% 11 13 Powerchip 260 95 274% 1.7% Source: iSuppli, February 28, 2003