Macronix International Co (
"Our capacity has been expanding by 20,000 wafers per month since the last quarter of 2000. In addition, we have continued to receive an increasing number of orders for flash memory chips from companies including Nintendo," said Patrick Tang (
According to Tang, Nintendo is continuing to buy flash memory chips from the Taiwanese chipmaker for use in its new line of hand-held Game Boys.
Last year, Macronix produced US$350 million worth of flash memory chips for Nintendo, the order accounted for 34 percent of Macronix's overall sales.
This year, Macronix is expected to increase the output for the Japanese Game Boy machines vendor to US$600 million.
"Nintendo's order is still expected to account for 25 to 30 percent of our revenues this year," said Tang, adding that Macronix will supply 3 million flash memory chips for Nintendo in the next one or two months.
Macronix supplies a 16 or 32 megabit mask read-only-memory chip (ROM) as well as a 1mb flash random access memory (RAM) for use in each Game Boy Advance.
Nintendo is slated to launch Game Boy Advance on March 21 in Japan under a price tag of US$83 each and will market it worldwide in June at US$99.95.
According to Tang, Macronix's relationship with Nintendo has been ongoing since the former was founded in 1989. "We took a long time to command Japanese trust," Tang said.
Macronix achieved a revenue of NT$32.2 billion in 2000 with after-tax profits of NT$10.6 billion. The company said the overall yield rate is expected to maintain 55 to 60 percent this year.
"We are not a made-to-order or DRAM company which are greatly affected by the overstock of integrated circuit chips and the descending demand for PCs worldwide, and our capacity load ratio is still standing at around 80 percent," Tang said.
Macronix's ratio is higher than the average of 50 to 70 percent for other chipmakers in Taiwan.
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