According to DRAMeXchange, a memory market research organization, DDR3, the main DRAM product, averaged a fixed transaction price of $1.81 in the first half of October, and the transaction price in the second half of September was $1.97, a decrease of 7.92%. The price of DDR3 was 2.72 US dollars in the second half of May 2010. After hitting the highest record, except for a slightly stable price in the second half of July, the price of DDR3 has been falling for five consecutive months, and it has fallen below two dollars in the second half of September.
In the first half of 2010, the price of DRAM showed an abnormal upward trend. Since PC demand was lower than expected afterwards, it officially entered the declining price situation since the third quarter. Accordingly, Samsung and Hynix will not be optimistic about semiconductor revenue in the fourth quarter of 2010.
With the exception of a few large companies, the days of Taiwanese companies in our country are also difficult. Because the pace of process upgrades has significantly lagged behind Japanese and South Korean companies, cost control has been poor, and operational pressures have been very high.
However, companies are more optimistic about the 2011 DRAM market. According to analysis by Nomura, stock prices of semiconductor pioneer companies in the first quarter of 2011 are expected to recover. Nomura Securities said that companies with a higher proportion of special DRAM and NAND Flash businesses will differentiate themselves from other players.
Tablet PC is expected to become the savior of DRAM. Under the simple analysis, the market is easy to find. Although the market growth of desktops and notebooks has slowed down, the growth rate of mobile and handheld electronic devices has increased. Apple’s iPad and iPhone are good examples. The use of DRAM and NAND flash memory in mobile devices has played a positive role in market expansion.
According to industry sources, DRAM market demand will start to pick up in March as PC makers are willing to purchase large quantities and agents’ inventory levels decline.
With many chip suppliers shifting more production capacity to NAND flash memory chip production to ensure the demand for smart phones and tablet computers, DRAM chip supply is likely to decrease, which will lead to DRAM chip prices starting to rise in March. PC OEMs' DRAM inventory will be reduced from 0.9 months to 0.8 months after mid-March, and 2Gb DDR3 chip futures prices will likely increase by nearly $3 in March. The current trend of rising prices has already begun to show, and it is expected to reverse the downtrend of DRAM for more than a year.
Tablets and smart phones are expected to save the DRAM market
Some people have said that in 2009 the DRAM market was fiercely competitive, and the manufacturers’ revenues were greatly reduced. They were optimistic about the 2010 market. However, the competition in 2010 was even worse than that. The price drop that lasted for five months was a disruption to the vendors' positions. Some of them even switched to production as SSDs.