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Monday, February 07, 2011

#CHIPS: "Can Touch-Screen Tablets Revive the DRAM Market?"

Touch-screen tablets could help resuscitate the DRAM market in 2011 and beyond if only three caveats can be avoided. Look for touch-screen tablets to become the leading market indicator for component integration success for the next five years. R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


DRAM sales for touchscreen tablets is rising quickly, from just 37.8 million gigabits in 2010 to a high of 3.5 billion gigabits in 2014, according to IHS iSuppli.

Here is what my Smarter Technology story says about DRAM and touch-screen tablets: The market for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) revived in 2010 from recessionary lows, but price-per-unit drops are causing analysts to predict an anomaly in 2011—depressed earnings despite growth in unit sales. DRAM exploded in 2010, increasing by 77 percent over the recession years, according to IHS' iSuppli Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.). Unit sales growth will continue in 2011, but declining prices-per-unit will likely depress DRAM revenues overall. However, touch-screen tablets will likely mitigate the overall dip in DRAM revenue by virtue of rising sales of low-power "mobile" DRAM, whose price has remained stable compared with "commodity" DRAM...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-e9cX