DDR3 under the tree
Meanwhile Al Soni, senior vice president of strategic alliances at Kingston, told HEXUS that spot prices in October and early November this year "rose very sharply and beyond anyone's expectation."
He said this was mainly caused by shortages that major PC makers experienced in their efforts to procure the right mix of DDR2 and DDR3 DRAMs, and that as we approach the holiday season most distributors would be "nervous about carrying high-priced inventories," and more willing to "carry less to minimise exposure."
He added, however that "The situation faced by the PC OEMs related to product mix - DDR2 vs DDR3 - really hasn't changed much and at best will not improve until the second quarter of 2010." This, he said would "only narrow the gap between the PC OEM contract prices and spot prices, which should benefit the end customer."
Indeed, customers thinking of buying SRAM should maybe think of splurging on DDR3, as it's currently more affordable than DDR2-800.
Soni told HEXUS he wasn't too worried about Korean price cutting, however, saying "I don't believe that the semiconductor companies in Korea and elsewhere are looking to slash prices any more than what the market can bear."
