14 DAY TRIAL // Micron Technology is somewhat misleading, at least in terms of name; their technology may be "micro", but the company is one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers worldwide. Among the four largest memory chip makers in the industry, the company provides customers with all the memory and storage areas, such as imaging, telecommunications or networking. Most of their products are sold on the Asia/Pacific market, while the United States are a 30 percent playfield.
The DRAM and NAND memory monster has imposed an aggressive price strategy over the industry players in Taiwan. This adjustment is alleged by experts to have finally put an end to fluctuating price trends that have been affecting the DRAM market for a while. As the end of the year approaches and it is time for quarterly and yearly financial reports, Micron has taken an aggressive approach over pricing for DRAM, as well as for NAND. This practice puts a whole load of pressure on the competition's shoulders.
Since August, 512Mb DDR2-667 memory cards have sported a downhill trend in terms of pricing, as figures presented by DRAMeXchange show. The price slope found an end in late November (the 28th and the 29th), with a final price of $0.82 ($0.92 at closing) on both days. The other DRAM producers can only hope for the flattish price trend to have really reached the true price bottom.
DRAM memory manufacturers are not the only affected players in the flattish price competition. The price politics, imposed by Micron, reflect on the DRAM-related industry players. For instance, chip and memory module houses makers have found themselves rushed by the emerging price trend.
Major companies in the DRAM manufacturing area, such as Elpida Memory, Micron Technology, Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation (PSC), ProMOS Technologies, Transcend Information and Power Quotient International (PQI), have witnessed their share prices raising from the industry's "pit-bottom".