Korea DRAM makers start bundling DDR3 with DDR2 modules

Korea DRAM makers start bundling DDR3 with DDR2 modules

This is being done in an effort to clean up the DDR2 inventories of those companies, industry sources say.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

TAIPEI: Since the prices of DDR3 chips continue to increase on strong demand and with the demand for DDR2 falling considerably, DRAM makers based in South Korea recently started bundling sales of DDR3 modules together with DDR2 modules.

This is being done in an effort to clean up the DDR2 inventories of those companies, industry sources say.

According to these sources, several research firms and manufacturing companies expect that the crossover point where the shipments of DDR3 surpass those of DDR2 will arrive soon. As a result of this, while the supply of DDR3 to the spot market is very tight, inventories of DDR2 have been stacking fast.

Leading makers of DRAM based in South Korea intend to bundle DDR3 modules with DDR2 modules with a view to avoiding a widening price gap between the two memory standards, the industry sources explained. The strategy of these companies is to minimise the impact arising from the combination of oversupply of DDR2 and the shortage of DDR3. Certain downstream channel distributors, the sources say, also have adopted this bundling sales strategy in order to promote DDR2 memory.

The spot market prices for 1300MHz 1Gb DDR3 chips were, on an average, US $3.08 on January 18, 2010, compared to US $3.01 on January 8, 2010. At the same time, the average prices for 800MHz 1Gb DDR2 fell below US $2.50, according to data available with DRAMeXchange. At present, DDR3 chips are priced at a premium of over 25% over DDR2 chips.

©CyberMedia News