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Technology Stocks : Micron Only Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandstuff who wrote (40760)	11/7/1998 12:09:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 53903

Taiwanese deny dumping DRAM Sandy Chen and Jack Robertson Taipei, Taiwan- Executives at Taiwan's major semiconductor companies last week steadfastly denied Micron Technology Inc.'s allegations that they had engaged in dumping activities, and claimed the country's rapidly growing memory-chip business is still tiny compared with other global regions. "If you add up all the DRAM capacity in Taiwan, it still isn't as big as [South Korea's] Samsung by itself," said Genda Hu, president of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association. Taiwan's DRAM producers accounted for less than 5% of the U.S. market-too small a factor to hurt U.S. chip makers, he claimed. While acknowledging that Taiwan has expanded its DRAM capacity, he added that the gains stem from a small initial base. Micron's action to file a dumping petition against Taiwan's DRAM suppliers last month could derail the island's unstated but lofty goal of becoming one of the world's largest DRAM producers. Micron's petition claims that several Taiwanese companies and one U.S. vendor were selling DRAMs in the U.S. market below cost. The case raises the question of how the U.S. government will deal with foreign DRAM makers that use Taiwan-based foundries. These include Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Siemens, and Toshiba. After waging anti-dumping campaigns against Japan and South Korea over the years, Boise, Idaho-based Micron now views Taiwan as the next potential threat in the market, according to Donald Floyd, an analyst at ING Barings Taiwan Ltd., Taipei. "It's a shot over the bow," Floyd said. "I hear Taiwan's DRAM makers, for the first time, are being qualified by major PC OEMs, but Micron may be trying to scare everybody [with their ITC suit]." Some of the Taiwanese companies named in Micron's complaint believe they are being wrongly accused. F.C. Tseng, president of foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., said the portion of DRAMs his company makes for Fujitsu Ltd. "is a very small quantity." He added that TSMC's output for Fujitsu was in turn sold in Japan, not in the United States. "In any event, we know TSMC's foundry prices on DRAMs are above our production costs, so we can't be dumping," Tseng said. He added that TSMC would welcome the chance to prove the company isn't dumping, and to clear up any aspersions cast on the foundry model. For this same reason, TSMC wanted to be included in last year's dumping case filed by Micron against Taiwanese SRAM makers, but the U.S. Commerce Department refused to add the company. Some sources believe Commerce will again exclude TSMC on DRAMs. Peter Chang, president of Hsinchu, Taiwan-based foundry United Semiconductor Corp., said none of his company's DRAM production is shipped to the United States, but goes instead to China or is used in the domestic market. After pouring billions of dollars into new fab capacity over the years, Taiwan's total worldwide DRAM market share is roughly 11%, Floyd said. The island is expected to boost its DRAM market share to about 24.8% by 2000, based on the number of new fabs coming on line this year and next, according to projections made earlier this year by Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp., Hsinchu. Vanguard, one of Taiwan's largest DRAM makers, was named in Micron's complaint techweb.com