Stable or slowly rises on spot comparing with contract

Don't show traditional soft/slow season effect signal yet.

1. As Japanese DRAM companies reduce the portion on DRAM output, there is no tradition "year-end" effect from Japanese DRAM companies on March.

2.Strong demand for So-DIMM from Notebook PC does make demand solid for x16 components. ( Notebook PC's shipment estimates above 4 million units on the 1Q02; is around 30% yoy)

Contract price is still increasing.

Obviously, contract price still can succeed to increase to $5 level due to tightly controlling by suppliers. Marketers assume that even it will keep increasing in the 2H of this month; it won't be so sharply increasing anymore. $5 is the magic number for most of DRAM makers to make some profit already. So OEM customers probably won't accept any higher price without really strong demand to support price. But? It's always the saying right now, the fact is real supply/demand at that moment deciding the price.

Memory cost per PC raises to 5% of total cost.

The historical low price was around $10 for 128MB (which is around $0.85 per 128Mb). If we calculate the memory cost ration on low cost pc (let say $900) which is $10/$900=1.1%. Now the price for 128MB is around $42 (which is around $4.85). The memory cost ration on low cost PC is $42/$900=4.6%. That's for just 128MB, currently if you install the XP as the major OS you need 256MB, then the ration double to 9%.

Historical reasonable/acceptable memory cost for PC total cost ration was around 5~10%.

Spot price will stable or slowly trace contract this week.

Spot market is still very caution for trading in high price. Waiting for signals of demand and price situation of Apr. Since the 2Q usually is the slow moving season on PC section.