Micron's NOR Operating Revenue Shrinks Taiwanese Manufacturers

Beijing time on March 13 news, iSuppli recently released a mobile market storage report. The report pointed out that the NOR market fell sharply in the fourth quarter, and the most influential manufacturers were the United States Micron, one of the largest manufacturers in the NOR field.

In the fourth quarter, Micron’s NOR operating income fell by 24% from the previous quarter, from US$368 million in the third quarter to US$281 million. The company noticed weakness in the mobile phone field and should expand its presence in the PC field. Micron also acknowledged that it must adopt multiple memory methods. Some customers and chipset partners favor this strategy because it is easy to verify, but it is not particularly suitable for high-touch (low-volume) applications. In non-PC embedded product shipments, this application is the majority. For embedded and gaming applications, it is shifting to 300mm wafers and 45nm NOR, while for entry-level phones, it may be shifting to low-density phase-change memory.

Other manufacturers in the industry, like Micron, are also facing a bad situation, and Taiwanese manufacturers are still fighting to escape. In addition to the sixth-ranked GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. The operating income of Taiwanese manufacturers was flat or declining in the third quarter. For example, the third-ranked Wanghong Electronics’ operating revenue dropped from US$140 million to US$123 million; Winbond’s operating revenue dropped from US$92 million to US$69 million.

However, Wang Hong and Winbond will claim to shrink the die size, launch NAND products and enter mobile and automotive applications. Wanghong plans to use its 75nm process to produce 512Mb 1.8V NOR chips and 1Gb single layer unit NAND. Winbond has increased the monthly production of 58nm NOR flash memory to 6,000 wafers this year, and plans to start production of 46nm single-layer cell NAND in early 2013.