Posted on Tuesday, January 27 2009 @ 19:30 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
After filing for insolvency last week, German memory maker Qimonda is attempting to continue production. It's not business as usual, but the firm will do everything possible to maintain production and fulfill supply contracts.
On Friday (Jan. 23), a Munich court appointed Michael Jaffé as preliminary insolvency administrator. He announced plans to examine the situation and promised to keep the public informed.
"It is not 'business as usual', but we [will] do everything possible to maintain production and fulfill supply contracts," a company spokesperson said. He added that he was unaware of any supply bottlenecks caused by business partners nervous about not being paid, including Qimonda's own back-end facilities.
Meanwhile, the predictable finger-pointing has begun. Among the favorite culprits are Qimonda management, the Saxon regional government and Qimonda's parent company, Infineon. Some commentators here said Infineon should have sold Qimonda much earlier, and the company had missed an opportunity to sell its Qimonda shares to memory maker Micron Technology.
More info
at EE Times. Meanwhile, analysts
predict Qimonda's bankruptcy may help the DRAM industry by cutting excess supply and stabilizing prices.
“Output cuts have helped the market condition to turn a little bit better and it will probably get better some more toward February, but for the whole of 2009, there is a chance that PC demand will stall. The downturn has bottomed out for now, but it does not look like the market condition will keep getting better,” said Mr. Ishida.
“This will reduce supply growth, helping to stabilize pricing, and helping to mitigate the oversupply-driven downturn,” Nam Hyung Kim, chief analyst for memory at iSuppli, said in a statement.
According to iSuppli, the potential impact of the Qimonda insolvency will come in the graphics and server chip markets, as in the Q3 2008 it accounted for 26% of shipments of graphic DRAMs, which are used to make graphics cards and video game consoles, as well as 15% to 20% of server memory.
