Great Vista for DRAM makers looking forward

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 04 July 2006 08:21

IT Industry - Strategy

See also: Cheap chips make notebooks cheap as chips

The release of Microsoft's new memory-hungry operating system, Vista, is being tipped to boost the share price of major DRAM (dynamic random access memory) manufacturers by as much as 50 percent.

According to the latest edition of financial weekly Barron's, DRAM manufacturers are already seeing increased demand for their products and are expecting a further leap as the demands of Vista filter down into sales of new PCs and memory upgrades.

According to the report, leading DRAM manufacturers include Samsung Semiconductor, a unit of Samsung Electronics, Infineon's Qimonda unit, Hynix Semiconductor and Micron Technology.

"As pricing improves throughout the DRAM market, stocks of some manufacturers could climb by 30 percent to 50 percent. Infineon and Inotera both look poised for big gains," Barron's predicted.

Elsewhere, Samsung was reported saying that it does not expect demand for DRAM in the second half to be affected by delays in the release of Vista because personal computer makers typically purchase DRAM two to three months ahead of time.

Microsoft has just announced a delay in the expected launch date of the consumer version of Vista to January 2007. A version of Vista for large business customers will be available in November.