Wonderful Wonga-Land For DRAM-Makers

Since the beginning of 2007 the DRAM makers have lost $13 billion of the stuff as prices fell by over 50 per cent per year in both 2007 and 2008.

Every schoolboy knows that if you over-supply a market, prices drop and everyone makes a loss. DRAM makers know this, but carry on worshipping the Goddess of Market Share as she drives them, remorselessly, to ruin.

The Koreans seem unbeatable with over half the market. The others should have given up long ago. Europe's only DRAM maker is bankrupt. Does it matter? Will we Europeans be worse off without a DRAM-maker? I don't think so. And the Japanese, Americans and Taiwanese don't need DRAM-makers either.

But DRAM makers do attract friends. Governments love them. In the early years of this decade, the UK government proposed grants amounting to £47,000 per job to attract LG to build a DRAM fab in Wales.

The government of Saxony is falling over backwards to try and fund a solution to keep the Qimonda DRAM fab going.

The Taiwanese government has agreed to help its local DRAM-makers from going bust.

For DRAM-makers it's a wonderful wonga-land where doing something so mundane as selling an IC for a profit is strictly something for the dicky birds.