Taiwanese and other Asian dynamic random access memory makers have been given a new lease of life for their mainstay 64MB DRAM product thanks to US competitor Micron which late last week had to recall a large number of defective chips and halt some of its production lines.
The effect on spot prices, which have been plummeting for the past four months, was dramatic with a rebound from $4.50 per chip to $5.50 per chip within 24 hours and a further increase to $6.20 predicted this week by Taiwanese manufacturers. This phenomenon’s influence has a limit, but prices could rise to around $8 to $10, Nicky Lu, chief executive of memory design house Etron Technology told the Taiwan Commercial Times.
The unexpected boost to business, which had been expected to continue worsening until new generation 128MB and 256MB chips take over as industry standard, came when major US makers Compaq and Dell began returning defective memory chips to Micron.
