Taiwan’s top PC DRAM chipmaker, Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), suffered a substantial loss in its global market share last quarter, primarily because of a 32 percent quarterly decline in its average selling price, market researcher IHS iSuppli said yesterday.
In the second quarter, Nanya Technology, ranked No. 5 in the world’s PC DRAM market, seized a 4.7 percent share of the world’s PC DRAM market by revenue, IHS iSuppli said in a report. This dropped to 3.6 percent last quarter, the report said.
The “significant drop [is] largely driven by the supplier’s relatively weak ASP [average selling price],” IHS iSuppli analyst Mike Howard said in the report.
The Taoyuan-based chipmaker’s shipments grew by a scant quarterly rate of 7 percent, less than the industry average of 13 percent, Howard said.
Over the next few quarters, Nanya will face an uphill climb because of its heavy exposure to the PC DRAM market, which is expected to continue to be affected by oversupply, Howard said.
South Korean electronics -giant Samsung Electronics grabbed a -record-high market share of 45 percent in the third quarter, further strengthening its top position in the DRAM industry, IHS iSuppli said.
“Samsung perennially has the DRAM industry’s largest capital expenditure budget, allowing it to reduce costs and offer advanced products more quickly than the competition,” Howard said. “Because of this, the company was better able to absorb the decline in ASP in the third quarter, which fell 26 percent for the DRAM industry as a whole. Samsung’s ASP fell just 17 percent during the quarter.”
Samsung’s share of global DRAM market revenue has been rising in recent years, IHS iSuppli said. The South Korean chipmaker saw its market share expand to 37 percent last year, from 34 percent in 2009.
Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) and Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) saw their market shares increase to 1.6 percent and 0.9 percent respectively, while ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) dropped to 0.8 percent, IHS iSuppli’s tally showed.
Separately, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) yesterday said in a statement that the price of mainstream PC DRAM chips dropped 6.39 percent to US$0.9 per unit in the first half of this year, from two weeks ago.
The market research house blamed Thailand’s severe floods, which halted hard disc drive production, delayed PC shipments and slowed DRAM chip demand, for the weak price in the PC industry’s seasonally slow fourth quarter.
That brought the price decline to 55 percent since May, TrendForce said.
The market researcher said the price decline slowed after major DRAM makers cut output, boding well for a recovery in the next quarter as the supply glut is expected to improve.
Presently, DRAM output has been reduced by 44 percent to 250,000 wafers a month from 450,000 wafers, TrendForce said.
Separately, Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a PC DRAM venture between Nanya Technology and US memory giant Micron Technology Inc, yesterday said the board approved new fund-raising projects, including issuing a combined 1.5 billion common shares or corporate bonds via private placement.
The board also approved the plan to borrow US$133 million from Micron affiliate Numonyx Holdings BV.
The proceeds will be used to buy new equipment to increase production volume using advanced 30-nanometer technology.
Yesterday, the board also approved the proposal to scrap a rights issue by selling 1.1 billion common shares.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to