Memory chips usually make up the biggest volume of semiconductors on a single electronic device, and they are as important as the brain chips — while microprocessor chips are seen as the brains for electronics, the memory chips store the data and interact with the brains.
Now, the biggest question for memory manufacturers — and possibly the entire semiconductor industry — is when the downturn will end. Halfway through earnings season, we have received a lot of guesses that the downturn will end this year, but there also have been mixed signals.Unsurprisingly, one of the most optimistic outlooks for memory came from, you guessed it, Micron, one of the top four memory-chip makers in the world. Micron’s top executives hinted that the worst is already behind them.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. 005930, +1.98%, another of the top memory makers in the world, recently lost the crown as No. 1 overall chip maker back to Intel as price declines in dynamic random access memory and flash memory chips, or NAND, hurt Samsung’s total revenue. Like Micron, Samsung said it saw DRAM start to bounce back as some data-center and mobile-phone purchases picked back up, but added that there was “low visibility in the business” for the future.
More from Therese: AMD has built Rome, but it will take much more than a day to know if it’s a winner Another equipment maker, Lam Research Corp. LRCX, +4.78% , said that customers were taking actions to begin to restore the supply-and-demand balance, reducing investment and lowering utilization levels for both NAND and DRAM up to the June quarter. As a result, Lam forecast growth for both NAND and DRAM continuing to decline, exiting the year well below the long-term demand trend lines.
Ross, of Cascend, said that prices of both DRAM and NAND chips recently spiked, but added that the “spiking” comes after a big plummet, so it’s more as if prices have paused at current levels.
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