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November 09, 2009
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| The trading price of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, is soaring in the fourth quarter, according to DRAMeXchange, an online semiconductor marketplace. The price of 1-gigabyte, 1333 MHz DDR3 recently hit $3 for the first time since May, when the online market first started to post prices. The new generation DDR3 DRAM market is led mainly by local companies such as Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor. The price of 1-gigabyte, 8MHz DDR2, another DRAM product, is also on the rise, nearing $3 less than a month after it topped $2 for the first time in more than a year. The price of this particular memory chip hovered around $2.20 last April and reached $ 2.34 the following month before plunging to as low as 62 cents in December 2008. Industry experts predict the price of DDR2 to drop in coming weeks with the arrival of the main DDR3 products. With the rise in DRAM prices, chipmakers around the world are expected to rake in larger profits. According to DRAMeXchange, the industry’s total sales in the third quarter hit $5.72 billion, a 40.7 percent increase from the previous quarter. Last month, Samsung Electronics reported that its third-quarter revenue in the semiconductor sector came in at 7.46 trillion won ($6.38 billion), a 25.3 percent increase compared with the same period last year. The company said in a release that “the improvement was influenced by a rise in market prices for memory chips and increased demand.” Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics and Hynix controlled 31.1 percent and 23 percent of the market in the third quarter, respectively . The market share of Japanese chipmakers dropped 2 percentage points, to 18.2 percent. By Lee Eun-joo [angie@joongang.co.kr] |
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