China’s state-backed technology conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup has acquired a majority stake in XMC, a major compatriot semiconductor manufacturer, and brought it under a new holding company called Yangtze River Storage Technology. From this point on, XMC will be responsible for coordinating the development of China’s memory industry, which is wholly in pursuit of NAND Flash production.
DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, reports DRAM prices were on a decline from October 2014 to June 2016, with the average contract price of DDR3 4GB plunging 62% from U$32.75 to US$12.5. “After being on a downtrend for almost two years, DRAM contract prices stabilized in June as most negotiations settled at US$12.5,” said Avril Wu, DRAMeXchange research director. Due to the tightening of supply, first-tier PC OEMs also started their third-quarter contract negotiations earlier in June. DRAMeXchange expects DRAM contract prices to go up in the third quarter, and the increases will range from about 4% to 8%.
The latest NAND Flash price report from DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, finds prices of TLC wafers and spot prices of mainstream memory cards have been on a steady rise for three consecutive months since this April. The uptrend will continue as the possibility of the market encountering tight supply in the third quarter becomes more apparent. The margin of price increase has also been getting larger over the past month.
The DRAM market is in the midst of a long-term slump and the average contract selling price has suffered 19 consecutive months of decline. DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, reports that the average selling price of DDR4 arrived at US$1.31 this May, while DDR3 came to just US$1.25. All suppliers are now under enormous cost pressure.
Inotera held a brief press conference today, stating that Micron has decided to delay the schedule of merging Inotera, and the future update will be announced in later part of this year. Other than the NT$80B syndicated loan is still processing, current technical support between MMT (Micron Memory Taiwan) and Inotera has been put on hold. However, both Micron and Formosa group both stated that it is only the delay of schedule, not the end of discussion. Both parties will continuously seek for the possible solution in order to complete the transaction.
