DRAM revenue up 42% in Q4
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- EDN, January 29, 2010
On the heels of 40% sequential revenue growth in Q3 2009, worldwide DRAM revenue grew another 42% in Q4 2009 climbing to $8.682 billion, according to the latest data from DRAMeXchange.
The market researcher attributed the December quarter growth to hiking ASP (average selling prices) for DRAM, output enhancement, and improving PC sales.
“With the Windows 7 launch in the end of October and the recovering macro-economy, demand in Q4 has outperformed our expectation,” DRAMeXchange said in a statement. “DDR2 still remained its mainstream memory standard in Q4. That demand is much stronger than DDR3 since demand for middle/entry level models looks good. That is, DDR2 shortage happened in Q4 and resulted in the up climbing DDR2 contract price in October and November, as well as stable pricing level in December. Based on a DRAMeXchange check, DDR2 average contract price had sharply raised 61% in Q4, while spot price also climbed 68%.”
As to output capacity, DRAMeXchange reported that Q4’s DRAM supply bit growth rate was up 20% sequentially given the continuous technology migration and pulling-up utilization rate from Taiwanese vendors.
“Given the boosting DRAM price and output, DRAM vendors recorded satisfactory revenue growth in Q4,” DRAMeXchange said. “PSC has largely outperformed market average by showing 111.6% revenue growth, followed by Elpida with 63.9% revenue growth.”
