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To: MileHigh who wrote (42114)	1/10/1999 9:21:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 53903

Fujitsu To Stop Producing Conventional DRAMs This Year TOKYO (Nikkei)-- Fujitsu Ltd. (6702) will abandon mass production of unprofitable DRAM chips as early as the end of 1999, shifting its resources to more promising products such as high-performance chips for servers and flash memories for cellular phones, company sources said Sunday. Fujitsu is the first Japanese chipmaker to withdraw from production of the conventional memory chips. Although the DRAM market expanded to 41 billion dollars in 1995, cutthroat price competition reduced the market to just 13 billion dollars last year. Conventional DRAMs still account for more than 80% share of the world semiconductor market. Fujitsu is expected to produce 80 billion yen worth of DRAMs in the fiscal year ending March, some 80% from conventional DRAMS. At its peak, the company enjoyed a 10% share of the global DRAM market, fifth in the world. It still has a 5% share and 10th place, but will likely suffer a deficit of about 100 billion yen on the business in fiscal 1998. While Fujitsu will stop producing mainstay 64-megabit DRAMs at its plants in Iwate prefecture and Oregon by year-end, it is not expected to cut staff as both factories produce system chips and microprocessors, which are profitable.

To: MileHigh who wrote (42114)	1/10/1999 9:43:00 PM
From: PAinvestor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 53903

This announcement is consistent with the thesis that there will only be some 4-5 mass producers of commodity DRAM left: Micron, Toshiba, Samsung, NEC and perhaps one other. Fujitsu management had been hinting at withdrawing for some time. They have alluded that they will concentrate more on mainframes and software applications, so I had expected it sooner or later. For background on why this shakeout is happening, please refer to my previous posts on this thread.