Taipei, Dec. 22, 2012 (CENS)--World’s leading DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chipmakers are estimated to reduce capital expenditure by 21% in 2013 from 2012 in spite of reduced number of the players after years of industry-wide consolidation and recent market rebound, according to market consulting firm DRAMeXchange.

Samsung, currently the world’s No.1 DRAM maker and the only money maker in the industry, announced it will cut down the spending in 2012 by 48% from 2012 level, to only US$110 million. The company is adjusting its standard-DRAM lines for the profitable Mobile DRAM production.

SK Hynix, Micron Technology, Elpida Memory, Nanya Technology and Inotera Memory have also slashed their 2013 expenditure plan.

DRAMeXchange pointed out that lower capital spending means slowdown in DRAM process technology advance. It estimated 3X-nanometer processes will remain the mainstream technologies for making DRAM chips in 2013. In the past few years, the process technology has experienced migration at speed of two generations.

Samsung and SK Hynix are shifting to 2X-nanometer processes while Micron is ramping up output of 3X-nanometer chips. At the cross-over point of the process technology generation, some DRAM chips using high-end processes have surged in price due to supply shortage. For instance, spot-market prices of 2Gb DDR3 DRAM chips have risen to US$1.075 apiece, on average.

This year, most of the world’s leading DRAM chipmakers have been hunted by operation loss due to the continuously shrinking shipments of PCs worldwide.

The organization pointed out that in 2013 world DRAM industry would be dominated by three camps each led by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.

(by Ken Liu)