Inotera Memories is confident about increased production coming from beyond the DRAM market among leading memory players, which bodes well for profits for the industry this year, according to company president Charles Kao at a June 7 investors conference.
Kao indicated that the top-five DRAM makers had doubled their memory production for non-PC applications to almost 50% of their total in the first quarter of 2006, up from 20% over a year ago. The ratio should exceed 50% in the second quarter according to the wafer in schedules among these vendors, he noted.
The pricing trend for DRAM should stabilize alongside with the anticipated 25-30% average cost drop, Kao said. Gross margins of DRAM production, under a stabilized price environment, should increase by 25-30% as well.
According to iSuppli, the top five DRAM vendors in the first quarter of 2006 were Samsung Electronics, Infineon Technologies, Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Elpida Memory.
Article translated by Esther Lam and edited by Michael McManus
