Who's Making Your DRAM? Hu's Making Your DRAM

by Gregory Sullivan — Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 09:00 AM EDT

DRAM manufacturing is not sexy. It's a substantial market - $34 billion dollars worldwide in 2006, slated to grow to $46 billion by 2010- but it's unlikely to have a made-for-TV-movie made about it anytime soon. But it's a small point of honor for South Korea that they are the world leader in the manufacture of DRAM, and it appears they are poised to lose that title to Taiwan/China manufacturers by the end of the decade.

"South Korean companies are adding DRAM manufacturing capacity, but this is contributing significantly to the collapse in pricing for the memory this year," Lidow noted. "These price declines will cause South Korean manufacturers to reduce DRAM output growth next year. Meanwhile, Taiwanese/Chinese suppliers will increase their output, and may surpass the South Korean manufacturers in DRAM manufacturing capacity by 2010."

"The DRAM market has grown because of added manufacturing capacity, but this has required DRAM suppliers to drastically cut prices in order to sell their output," Lidow said. "Prices now are below cash production costs for many suppliers. Annual DRAM revenue growth peaked in March, and is in the midst of a deceleration that will continue until March 2008."

I remember the good old days when the Japanese were stealing our jobs. Then the Koreans stole their jobs. Now the Chinese are stealing their jobs. Pretty soon no one will have a job, but DRAM will be free so we can all load up our desktop and browse Dice.com really fast together.

Tags: RAM, DRAM, KIN, WHO, King, AM, K

Who's Making Your DRAM? Hu's Making Your DRAM

Login with Social Media or Manually