According to DRAMeXchange, PC shipments will be down 5% in Q3 on Q2, and the number of PCs shipped in the second half of the year will be under 195m units. Meanwhile, DRAM prices are falling.
In the first half of August, the DDR3 2GB contract price declined 4.5% to $42 from $44 in July, says DRAMeXchange, while the DDR2 contract price sank 8.75% to $36.5.
Although DRAM chip prices are declining with falling PC shipments the gross margins of DRAM vendors are 40%+ at Samsung and Hynix and 35% for Elpida.
Korean vendors are the most aggressive in migrating to new processes with Samsung on 56nm and 46nm, and launching 35nmproduct in 4Q10, which will account 5%-10% of total output.
Elpida plans to skip the 50nm process and directly launch 45nm in 3Q10.
Rexchip is expected to fully migrate to a 45nm process in 1Q11 and turn to manufacturing commodity DRAM for Elpida.
Powerchip will install two immersion scanners in 4Q10 and have a total of four 4 immersion scanners in 2011.
Nanya and Inotera will increase capacity to 50K wpm at the end of 3Q10 and 60K in 1Q11. Inotera will fully migrate to a 50nm process with some production on 40nm. Capacity can be increased to 130K in 1Q11.
August NAND flash prices have increased for system-level products, but declined for module-level products, says DRAMeXchange.
For system-level products sales they have increased 4-5%; for module-type applications like memory cards, the price has slipped 2-5%.