DRAM Suppliers Take Major Hit in Second Quarter
By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
July 27, 2007, 3:11 PM
The second quarter of 2007 was a terrible time to be in the DRAM business. Tremendous oversupply led to plummeting revenues for all of the world's top 8 and #10 suppliers, even though shipments continued to rise, according to a report released today by technology analyst firm iSuppli.
Hit hardest by the typhoon was #2 Hynix Semiconductor, which saw revenues whacked down 29.7% over the previous quarter to about $1.52 billion, despite unit shipment growth over the previous quarter of 22%.
Not to say Samsung didn't also take a hit. The world's leading supplier saw a 16.7% quarterly decline in DRAM revenue as well. But iSuppli is known for finding silver linings in even the worst statistics, and this time, Samsung gets the silver.
Because so many other companies fared worse, its global market share rose by 1.5% to 24.2%. Following it on the uptick was #5 Micron, which gained a full point of market share to 10.1%, signaling that the US-based DRAM company may not be as vulnerable as analysts once feared.
Who weathered the storm completely? Tiny #9 Etron, which saw a 10.6% boost in revenue to $94 million, even though its unit shipments increase didn't make the charts.
ISuppli judges "units" in this case by converting all configurations of DRAM sold as though they were multiples of 512 Mbit components. Given that fact, it's an academic procedure to find out who among iSuppli's top eight earns the most per half-gigabit shipped.
While #1 supplier Samsung makes about $3.37 per half-gigabit, #5 Micron comes close behind with $3.33. #3 Qimonda comes in third on this scale at about $2.94 per half-gigabit.
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