In the second half of the storage boom, be cautious

Although Micron successfully acquired Elpida, a Japanese DRAM maker, and squeezed South Korea's SK Hynix to become the world's second-largest DRAM maker, Mark Adams, the president of Micron Global, was cautious about the memory market sentiment in the second half of the year. He said that the overall economic environment in the world is still unstable, and in the absence of obvious expansion of demand, there is no plan to expand the new DRAM or NAND Flash plant in the short term.

In the first half of the year, the memory market experienced a rare improvement in the past three years. The prices of DRAM and NAND Flash both rose. All the memory factories suffered losses from profits and profits. However, after the third quarter, the market conditions suddenly experienced a "hard landing." In July, the prices of DRAM and NAND Flash both fell. For Micron, which has just completed its merger and acquisition, it does need to “listen more and watch more” in the second half of the year.

Mark Adams said that after completing the acquisition of Elpida at the end of July, it means that Micron’s production capacity will increase by 90% in 2 years. Although the market demand is still healthy, it needs to be more careful in investment expansion. In particular, the global economy is still unstable and the US market is improving. However, there was no outstanding performance in the mainland market and there was no obvious improvement in the European market. On this occasion, Micron did not plan to build a new 12-inch plant again.

Recently, there has been doubt about the excess orders in the Mobile DRAM market. Mark Adams said that although the market demand for smart phones continues to grow, this is still a problem. However, the DRAM market was originally seeking a balance between supply and demand, and Micron is also looking at films. Market conditions are constantly adjusted.

Relatively speaking, Mark Adams is more optimistic about the NAND Flash market. He said that in the past three years, the main demand for the NAND Flash market came from eMMCs used in smart phones and tablet computers, and solid-state drives (SSDs) used in computers and servers. These two markets have high demand. From the perspective of supply, it is difficult to reduce the process technology to below 20 nanometers. With only four major suppliers in the world, each supplier has its own control over the new production capacity, and the chances of renewed oversupply are not high. .

Mark Adams emphasized that in the future, Micron will not expand production in pursuit of market share. Instead, it must invest wisely in investment, pursue the economic scale of production capacity and increase the return on stockholders' equity, and use the memory for the past 10 years. The lesson of excess capacity in the market is to be careful not to make wrong investments.

Therefore, Mark Adams said that Micron did not plan to build a sealing and testing plant in Taiwan. In the future, Taiwan's production capacity will work closely with the foundry and foundry. The industry believes that Micron will still be commissioned by Li Cheng, Nan Mao, Fortune Branch and other packaging and testing plants.