DDRs are weak in demand for Christmas Holidays Rallying on little to no news was nothing new for the December market and it did just that again in last week’s market for many markets including USA, Europe, Japan were closed on Christmas holidays. Although on light volume and sharp dropping 2H December contract prices, unlike last month’s end, DDR didn’t crash down dramatically at the end of December. The Ave. prices of 256Mb 32Mx8 DDR 400MHz/333MHz/266MHz stands firm at $3.77, $3.7 and $3.60 respectively. While the DDR’s weakness on demand is viewed by some market participants as a concern. We, considering the content per box, think DDR may approach its bottom soon and rebound triggering by the raise on content per box in line with the dropping contract prices on the first quarter of 2004. SDRAM stays at high level for shortage unsolved SDRAMs have been outperforming their DDR counterparts on a relative basis, but the 32Mx8/16Mx8/8Mx16 remain range-bound, up from $5.71 to $5.76, (+0.88%), $3.61 to $3.65 (+1.1% ), and $3.44 to $3.48 (1.15%) respectively from and 4Mx16 is up from $2.98 to $3.01(+1%) from 12/23 to 12/29. We project SDRAMs can not maintain their stance in positive territory for the first quarter of 2004 as the supply will increase according to our survey and the demand will get down in slow season. Projection for Q1 2004 contract prices Even though 2H December 2003 contract prices were dipping around 8% - 9% again by PC OEMs’ aggressive negotiation. We still project the avg. contract prices for the first quarter 2004 may keep going down around 10% to $3.55 from current $3.88. The dropping is caused by the shrinking demand from PC OEMs and slow spot market. And, it may rebound pushing by the demand from higher content per box as we will mention in “ The industry analysis “