Computer memory chipmakers hiked contract chip prices further in the first half of this month due to a supply shortage, Taipei-based market researcher DRAMeXchange said yesterday.
A supply shortfall had driven up chip prices in the first quarter, bucking the trend in what is usually a slow season.
Chipmakers, who negotiate with customers, mostly computer vendors, about chip prices twice a month, raised contract prices for conventional DDR (double-data-rate) memory chips by between 3 percent and 5 percent in the first half of this month, DRAMeXchange said.
As most memory chipmakers are boosting their production of second-generation DDR2 chips in anticipation of demand, they have not been able to match demand for DDR chips since last month, it said.
"The demand for DDR chips is still there, although DDR2 is set to overtake DDR as the mainstream computer memory chip," DRAMeXchange said.
Intel Corp, the world's biggest chipmaker, planned for a third of its chipsets to make use of DDR chips in the current quarter, the researcher said.
The contract prices for DDR2, which are 10 percent higher than those for DDR, held steady in the first half of this month, after a rally in excess of 20 percent in the first quarter, according to DRAMeXchange.
Nanya Technology Corp (
Nanya Technology, which supplies chips to computer vendors including Dell Inc, sells 70 percent of its chips on a contract basis. The company raised its contract prices by between 3 percent and 5 percent for the second half of last month compared to the first half, it said.
On the spot market, rising DDR2 demand drove the price for the mainstay DDR2 512MB 533 MHZ chip to rise 0.4 percent to US$5.07 per unit in the past week, according to DRAMeXchange.
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (
Nanya Technology's sales for last month also set a record at NT$5.75 billion.
Shares in Nanya Technology and Powerchip yesterday slid 1.64 percent and 2.1 percent respectively, to NT$21.05 and NT$23.3 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the GRETAI Securities Market.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
RSS