DRAM prices soar after Qimonda bankruptcy

From InfoWorld: The price of the benchmark chips, 1-gigabit DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM chips that run at 667MHz, rose 27 percent to US$1.08 each, DRAMeXchange Technology reported at 6 p.m. in Taipei. DRAMeXchange runs an online chip clearinghouse.

In the short term, prices will likely continue to rise because Qimonda's bankruptcy will cause waves in the supply chain, according to analysts at Gartner. Other DRAM makers could also file for bankruptcy, causing further price rises. Anyone who needs to buy more DRAM might want to wait, though, because in the longer term prices will likely fall again: Even without Qimonda, there is still large oversupply in the DRAM market.

Qimonda filed for bankruptcy protection in Germany just before the Lunar New Year holiday after it failed to secure needed cash to continue operations. The company continues to operate, but two partners in Taiwan, Inotera Memories and Winbond Electronics, have refused to ship any more chips to the company because Qimonda already owes them both millions of dollars.

The two Taiwanese companies accounted for around half of Qimonda's DRAM output through technology and supply agreements.

Last week, DRAM prices climbed as much as 16 percent in North America and Europe in response to the company's bankruptcy filing, but Asian traders were already on holiday. The world's main spot market for DRAM chips is in Asia due to the huge number of desktop and laptop computers that are assembled in the region, mainly at factories in China.

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