German chipmaker Qimonda’s filing for insolvency protection yesterday is likely to help boost the price of mainstream computer memory chips under a lower production environment, a spot market operator for the chips said.
“The spot price of 1GB DDR2 DRAM chips is likely to rebound to between US$1.2 and US$1.5” per unit, Taipei-based DRAMeXchange Technology Inc (集邦科技) said yesterday in a statement.
The chips are widely used in personal computers.
Currently, many manufacturers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips are selling their products at US$0.75 to US$0.88 per unit, according to DRAMeXchange.
Global DRAM makers have experienced the worst ever downturn in recent months because of industry oversupply, which has caused prices to drop for two straight years and once declined to a degree that was below the companies’ cash-cost levels in the fourth quarter of last year.
DRAMeXchange said Qimonda had a 12-inch (300mm) monthly capacity of around 60,000 to 70,000 wafers.
By including the 80,000 to 90,000 wafers contributed by its Taiwanese foundry partner, Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), Qimonda’s total capacity of 12-inch wafers could reach up to 160,000 wafers a month, according to DRAMeXchange.
As the German firm will be walking away from this line of business, the worldwide supply of DRAM chips is likely to decrease by nearly 10 percent, DRAMeXchange said in the statement.
DRAMeXchange’s optimistic forecast is based on a monthly average output of 920,000 wafers the world’s major DRAM suppliers can produce in the first quarter. It also presumes that all other DRAM makers will keep the scale of their production cuts unchanged.
Qimonda’s insolvency will have a mixed impact on Taiwanese manufacturers, as the German company began phasing out its DRAM business in October, according to industry insiders.
The impact on Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a former foundry partner to Qimonda, should be limited, as Inotera president Charles Kau (高啟全) said at an investors’ conference on Tuesday that the company would ship half of its chips to US vendor Micron Technology Inc, beginning next quarter, after Qimonda stopped taking its orders recently.
Qimonda, the memory-chip unit of Infineon Technologies AG, owned about a 35.6 percent stake in Taoyuan-based Inotera, but sold the stake to Micron late last year.
Winbond, however, is likely to face a revenue decline of between 25 percent and 30 percent following Qimonda’s insolvency, company spokesman Wilson Wen (溫萬壽) told Bloomberg yesterday.
Qimonda’s bankruptcy came after it failed to obtain more rescue funds to keep the company afloat. The company last month secured a 325 million euro (US$450 million) rescue package from its parent company, Infineon Technologies AG, the German state of Saxony and a Portuguese development bank.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LISA WANG
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
RSS