NOR flash memory marketplace recovers

LONDON, UK: The NOR flash memory marketplace, which wasn’t generating profits for some quarters, has now begun recovering with prices moving progressively upward in the year 2010, as per Brady Wang, an analyst at market research firm Gartner Inc.

Maybe since the history suggests that main suppliers have not been installing capacity, indicating that prices would continue to increase until the last quarter of the year 2010, when capacity might again be capable of meeting the demand, Wang said. 

Such price increases are set to support companies such as Macronix, which recently purchased a 300-mm wafer DRAM fab from ProMOS, and Winbond.

That fab would enable Macronix to boost its production by about 20,000 wafers per month over the coming 12 months, Wang said. Winbond has already begun ramping up it’s NOR flash production. Wang said that the price of NOR flash will start to come under strain during the last quarter of the year 2010.